00:00:00:00 - 00:00:31:00
Christian Soschner
Is a computer that starts to wear in our and it starts to livestream. It's also going live on LinkedIn, which is very nice because LinkedIn is pushing all the social media platforms currently to push measurements. So it's a fantastic way to maximize the audience and we should be my friend on LinkedIn. And let's get started. It's good to see you.
00:00:31:01 - 00:00:31:23
Christian Soschner
How are you doing today?
00:00:32:18 - 00:00:35:19
Kimberley R. Miner
I'm good. I'm excited that it's Friday. How about yourself, Christian?
00:00:35:23 - 00:00:41:23
Christian Soschner
Oh, I am very happy that it's Friday. It was a fantastic day here in Vienna. Where are you? In the United States?
00:00:43:03 - 00:00:45:06
Kimberley R. Miner
I'm on the coast in California.
00:00:45:14 - 00:00:50:04
Christian Soschner
My God, it's pretty beautiful. Which part of the coast is it? Mostly Norfolk this hour.
00:00:50:13 - 00:00:51:19
Kimberley R. Miner
More to the south? Yeah.
00:00:52:06 - 00:00:57:24
Christian Soschner
Yeah. For the last year, I was in San Diego in June. It's gorgeous. Good. Yeah.
00:00:58:10 - 00:01:03:09
Kimberley R. Miner
It's beautiful. Yeah, it's a little stormy today, but we'll see what happens this weekend.
00:01:03:18 - 00:01:31:13
Christian Soschner
We don't have unfortunately, we don't have an ocean here in Austria. I mean, Austria and Vienna. And let's get right to the topic. Climate change. Every morning I go for a run and I remember basically Munich Walking Dead. So we had really hard winters back in the seventies, eighties of the last century. It was in Celsius. Man was trying to tremendous credit decrease most of the time into winter and it very abruptly at the end of April, beginning of May.
00:01:31:19 - 00:02:03:12
Christian Soschner
Then I moved to Graz. It was a little bit more sulfur in Austria, Mediterranean climate, so the weather was much better during the year and spring actually started in March and after I finished my career at the university, it was around still 2000 and moved to the capital of Austria, Vienna says bit more north. And Alvis, remember it's Vienna since it go running every morning as a lot of humidity.
00:02:03:12 - 00:02:25:17
Christian Soschner
In February, March it was gray and it was not really a nice spring weather that I was used to having crowds already early March and today it wasn't Iran. This morning it's mid-February and we had about 15 degrees today. So it was pretty warm. It was a nice spring, but it was still better like when I was a student.
00:02:26:03 - 00:02:40:21
Christian Soschner
And my first question to you is, is this just coincidence or is it a little bit warmer now in Vienna and next year it will be different? Or can we attribute this development to the big picture of climate change?
00:02:42:05 - 00:03:06:23
Kimberley R. Miner
Well, I definitely wouldn't attribute anything that you just described to climate change. You're describing weather in different locations. So what's happening with climate change is that we're seeing nonlinear changes that are looking different in different locations. I'm Marius, maybe drier and hotter. Some areas may be wetter overall, but generally warmer. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the weather is all going to change in the same way.
00:03:06:23 - 00:03:13:17
Kimberley R. Miner
So based on what you described, I'm not really sure that I could attribute that to anything besides local weather.
00:03:15:00 - 00:03:21:17
Christian Soschner
Yeah, that would be staying in climate change. Generally speaking, what what's the status currently?
00:03:23:03 - 00:03:30:09
Kimberley R. Miner
Give me a little bit more about what you mean by that. What do you mean? What's the status like? What's the the PM of CO2 or what are you looking for?
00:03:31:07 - 00:03:50:16
Christian Soschner
I'm looking for just getting in. I know a few about the topic of climate change, so when you open the internet currently it's a little bit. There are some messages that I read that are confusing to me. Some attribute to climate change too. It's just normal. It's just like I said, but it's just a little bit warmer sometimes.
00:03:51:00 - 00:04:16:05
Christian Soschner
And some say that we have a severe problem. That's the temperature. Generally speaking, in the next hundred years we'll go up and it's really risky for humanity. But I would like to use this recording is get a little bit more insight and debate overview. What's true, what's really climate change and what is just superstition stories that are currently spreading on the Internet.
00:04:16:05 - 00:04:23:01
Christian Soschner
And I'm hoping that you, as an expert in climate change, can bring a little bit more clarity to me and my audience.
00:04:23:14 - 00:04:48:01
Kimberley R. Miner
Sure. Okay. So we'll just start right at the beginning then. So the planet is one system, even though it feels like it's really far away between you and me right now. We're actually connected through a lot of different things. But what the what we're going to be talking about right now is the atmosphere. So there's a couple different layers that protect us from space and that also encompasses the planet and is able to hold things.
00:04:48:01 - 00:05:17:12
Kimberley R. Miner
So when we release carbon, when we release water vapor into the atmosphere, some of it is absorbed in different ways and some of it stays in the atmosphere. So basically what's happening with climate change is what we're calling the greenhouse effect. And this has been well known by Western science since the early 1800s that when you put more stuff in the atmosphere via water vapor, be it nitrous oxide, be it any form of carbon, then it traps more heat.
00:05:17:12 - 00:05:39:21
Kimberley R. Miner
So the sun that comes into the atmosphere doesn't come out and there's a little bit more radiation radiative forcing that stays and warms the planet. Now the reason that we call it climate change is not because it's going to be getting hot and dry everywhere. That is not correct. Everything is going to be regionally different, just like we're seeing right now.
00:05:39:21 - 00:06:01:23
Kimberley R. Miner
So we just had floods in California and right before that we were having a drought in California. Both of those are due to this extreme that we are starting to look at. So where is our climate used to be in the middle of the bell curve, kind of a normal Holocene climate where we all evolved and it's nice on some days and it's icky on some days.
00:06:02:19 - 00:06:27:11
Kimberley R. Miner
Now we're seeing extremes across the scale, so we may have some years of severe drought and then a punctuated storm. And that's just simply because the atmosphere is able to hold more heat, it's able to hold more water. And that's changing the circulation of the winds. It's changing the circulation of the ocean. It's causing the sea ice to melt on both poles, which is then further changing the way that the atmosphere and water circulates.
00:06:27:20 - 00:06:51:23
Kimberley R. Miner
So there's a lot of dynamics that are changing and they're changing faster than we've ever, ever seen in Earth's history. We're literally talking about thousands of years versus not even 100 years. So we're playing a very, very dangerous game as humans right now, functionally terraforming the earth to see what will happen if we introduce all of these new and weird dynamics.
00:06:52:05 - 00:07:16:11
Kimberley R. Miner
And there's a lot of concern about what that can do to the stability of the system. We're already losing biodiversity on a huge scale, what we're calling the sixth mass extinction, which means that plants and animals are dying faster than we've seen in many, many, many, many, many, many years. And so what that is causing across scales is instability.
00:07:16:11 - 00:07:26:21
Kimberley R. Miner
We're not really sure. It's much harder to predict the weather. It's much harder to predict this complete collapse of ecosystems that we rely on and we live with.
00:07:27:15 - 00:07:37:20
Christian Soschner
Well, an unpredictable event I could live with if we destroy our planet like it's a different story. What are the root causes of this climate change? But does it come from what?
00:07:38:17 - 00:08:00:11
Kimberley R. Miner
So that's what I was describing. It's the release of carbon water vapor, other gases into the atmosphere by humans. So if you think about kind of we're trying to treating the atmosphere like it's a garbage dump, so we're just kind of throwing everything willy nilly there. No real strong regulation saying, hey, you can't put carbon in the atmosphere.
00:08:00:21 - 00:08:07:01
Kimberley R. Miner
And so that's where it's all going. And it's some of it's cycling. Like I said, but some of it staying in the atmosphere.
00:08:07:20 - 00:08:15:05
Christian Soschner
So it's basically driving with cars, fossil fuel, for example, if you understand you're right, it's one of the root causes.
00:08:15:05 - 00:08:49:03
Kimberley R. Miner
One example, driving with cars is not the main cause of climate change now, but that's the main cause of the release of carbon. What's the music number? There's a number of different industrial sources and we see with our new tool called Emit, which is on the space station, that there's a lot of methane leaks all over the planet, whether it's from oil and gas, drilling for oil and gas use from garbage dumps and methane has the ability to warm the atmosphere at a much higher rate than CO2.
00:08:49:16 - 00:09:05:19
Kimberley R. Miner
So there's a lot of different ways that carbon gets into the atmosphere. But it's at the individual scale. It's really at the very large scale oil and gas industry corporations. Those are the main folks who are causing this change.
00:09:06:14 - 00:09:15:20
Christian Soschner
You mentioned measurement from the space station. Can you explain a little bit more in detail What's what's this new tool is doing? It's on this massive thing.
00:09:16:12 - 00:09:40:04
Kimberley R. Miner
Yeah. So it's called Emit, and it's measuring all sorts of different types of, let's say, dust, but also the land surface and the way that the land surface structure is. But one of the things that it's able to do that was not the main service, but it's able to do is identify methane. So it's identifying where methane is coming out of different locations.
00:09:41:12 - 00:09:46:09
Christian Soschner
And that's a great that's a great thing to have. And it is 100% accurate because.
00:09:47:07 - 00:09:53:01
Kimberley R. Miner
Nothing in the world is that accurate. No, that's impossible.
00:09:53:01 - 00:10:21:24
Christian Soschner
It's accurate as it can as it can be. But it's within our control. And it's sometimes it's sometimes on the Internet that there are these large cycles that the climate changes all the time in the history of of the planet, how much is manmade and how much truth is in this story that also some general changes in the climates that occur all the time on this planet in a bit of a role?
00:10:23:01 - 00:10:55:23
Kimberley R. Miner
Kristen, I'm happy to send you some links that you can share with folks who are listening. This is an extremely well known fact and it's been extremely well just proven that the climate change that is meant to be happening is what's happening. We are very clear that this is human driven climate change. What I just mentioned to you about the timescale of thousands years versus 100 years, we have visualizations on different national platforms to help people understand this, but this is it's really indisputable.
00:10:55:23 - 00:11:10:15
Kimberley R. Miner
I know there's some voices who are loud about whether or not this is human driven, but it's really not even worth, in my opinion, discussing, because we can discuss all day whether or not gravity Israel. But that's a.
00:11:12:13 - 00:11:30:12
Christian Soschner
That's a good that's a good example. So we can just say that climate change is definitely human made and we can do things against it. Which, which measures do you recommend to normal people? So if we wanted to do something like myself, for example, if I want to do something against climate change, what can I do?
00:11:32:02 - 00:11:58:14
Kimberley R. Miner
So I always say the most important thing to do if you're interested in addressing climate change, is right to your representatives. There are a lot of people taking direct action, which is a tactic that humans have used in the past to success. There are also other crises happening, like I mentioned, the biodiversity crisis that works in tandem and is potentially a direct result of some of these climate changes depending on where we're talking about.
00:11:58:24 - 00:12:25:07
Kimberley R. Miner
And there are things that people can do on an individual level for those, whether it's taking your garden and replanting it from grass and turning it into something with native species, giving space for pollinators, turning off lights outside at night, choosing to drive less, There's lots of different things to make the ecosystem and where you live, the animals and plants where you live more happy and be about in better relationships with them.
00:12:25:21 - 00:12:45:12
Kimberley R. Miner
But as far as the large scale dumping of carbon into the atmosphere, that is something that is going to be important for people to take care of on an a very large level because it is fossil fuel and industries that are driving it. And because of that, we really need to get our political willpower involved.
00:12:46:24 - 00:13:25:15
Christian Soschner
That is a critical advice. I mean, I learned this year or last year in 2023 already, that I always felt that the electricity that I consume here in Austria and Vienna is basically green. So I was I grew up with the story that most of the electricity that we produce in this country is derived from rivers, and it's basically as natural as it can be and it doesn't harm the environment when unfortunately, the war started between Russia and Ukraine, I learned that to see the difference that the majority of the electricity and the heat that I consume needs Russian gas to be produced.
00:13:25:15 - 00:13:33:20
Christian Soschner
And I think gas is not really the best solution for producing electricity in Iraq. And that assumption when you talk about.
00:13:34:11 - 00:14:06:03
Kimberley R. Miner
How electricity used. But I know that there are options for producing electricity using solar, wind, hydraulic hydrologic, forcing, like you mentioned. So I know there are a lot of good other options besides oil and coal. Why why do you think about it is that we did an amazing job in advancing technologically using oil and gas and coal, but we had to come to a point technologically where we could advance past that.
00:14:06:13 - 00:14:27:01
Kimberley R. Miner
We're now smarter as a species. We have more tools as a species, and we don't need to use these old tools. What we can do is we can move forward and create a more healthy living natural planet. And it seems like we should probably know how to do that and keep following the most interesting and technologically advanced thread.
00:14:27:21 - 00:14:37:14
Christian Soschner
That I couldn't agree more. Let's talk a little bit about your background. When did you become interested in the topic of climate change?
00:14:37:14 - 00:14:56:10
Kimberley R. Miner
I guess it wasn't so much an interest for me as kind of a need. So I've always been very, very dedicated to the planets and to the earth around me. I was I was a very, very small child. It was always my favorite place to be outdoors. And I would stay outdoors as long as possible every single day.
00:14:56:10 - 00:15:22:11
Kimberley R. Miner
And so obviously, as someone who really loves the planet, it's important to me for it to stay just as safe and healthy as possible. And so this is such a huge crisis. It's an existential crisis. It's a human crisis like we've never seen, never before in human history. And so it's very important to me to be part of the solution, or at least having conversations about what the solution could be.
00:15:23:04 - 00:15:31:14
Christian Soschner
Yeah, that's a good point. You're a climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. How did you become that?
00:15:33:09 - 00:15:55:03
Kimberley R. Miner
I interviewed for it, so I have a bunch of different degrees. My last degree was a Ph.D. in Earth and climate science, and I did a bunch of research all over the world in the high altitude and high latitude places. And so when a job opened up at JPL looking for someone who could do Arctic science, it seemed like a good fit.
00:15:55:03 - 00:16:11:06
Kimberley R. Miner
So I went ahead and tried for it and was able to move into that group. And then since then I've done a bunch of different things. But all in service of understanding the planet better, helping people understand why, all the reasons to love it, and that idea of protecting it.
00:16:12:00 - 00:16:33:09
Christian Soschner
Yeah, that's a good point. I learned it from my grandparents. So protecting the planet is one of the most important things and keeping the environment clean. You mentioned your Ph.D. work at the University of Maine. If I researched it right, it wasn't a health assessment of creation meltwater pollution. Can you tell us a little bit more about your findings and your work?
00:16:33:21 - 00:16:56:02
Kimberley R. Miner
Of course. So that was my dissertation. And for folks who don't know, there's a variety of different components that go into your Ph.D. You take classes, right? Just like you have it every single level. And that's a huge diversity of topics. And then you need to choose a specific thing to research and study. Ideally something that hasn't been done before, or that you are really contributing to the state of the science.
00:16:56:09 - 00:17:26:10
Kimberley R. Miner
And then you do a bunch of research on that and then you write at least three papers, peer reviewed journal article papers or chapters, and then you put that out for everyone to see and gain the knowledge from. So that is what I did for these three papers for three chapters. And what I was looking at is whether DDT, which is an old what is it called pesticide, sorry, which is an old pesticide that we used to use that's very dangerous.
00:17:26:17 - 00:17:48:14
Kimberley R. Miner
And also hexafluoride hexane, which is a pesticide that's still being used, can be found in glaciers very, very far away from where the pesticides were used. And whether when the glaciers melt and those chemicals come out, it could hurt the people who live downstream. And whether it could hurt the animals that live downstream. And we found that in some cases.
00:17:48:14 - 00:18:10:20
Kimberley R. Miner
And when there are downstream people who eat a lot of local fish, it could be an increased risk for them. For cancer, eating this local fish over their lifetime that have been exposed to DDT, there's also potentially secondary impacts to the ecosystem. Right. It's not good for fish to absorb DDT through their gills and then keep it in their bodies.
00:18:11:04 - 00:18:30:23
Kimberley R. Miner
And it's not good for the other animals who eat fish. It's not good for the plants around. So it's just another reminder that everything that we put into the atmosphere stays in the atmosphere and circulates around. And so when we use DDT in Louisiana, it may not stay in Louisiana, it may end up in the Arctic or the Antarctic.
00:18:32:03 - 00:18:46:15
Christian Soschner
So it's basically the same when I drive my car. It's a 20 year old diesel car as it's basically it doesn't stay where I am driving. It just travels through the atmosphere to other places. Synthesis With every gas that we put into the atmosphere.
00:18:47:11 - 00:19:09:08
Kimberley R. Miner
It's similar and it depends on the type of gas, depends on the weight of the gas, the properties of the gas, where the gas goes. But in this case, the two that I described, DVT and or vaccine, they have specific properties that make them really go towards the snow and ice and cold areas and then stay there.
00:19:10:15 - 00:19:13:01
Christian Soschner
And are released later. Later on.
00:19:14:03 - 00:19:31:09
Kimberley R. Miner
They're not necessarily released. It's just that they don't change state. So they they landed on the glacier. They got part entrained in the glacier. They became part of the glacier and they melt out of the glacier there, just stay in the same the whole time. But we're allowing them to move into different places.
00:19:33:02 - 00:19:44:20
Christian Soschner
Building on what you just described, I also read on the Internet that you are doing the Arctic methane project at the JPL. Can you tell me a little bit more about this project?
00:19:45:08 - 00:20:14:23
Kimberley R. Miner
Sure. So the Arctic methane challenge is a combined effort between NASA and the European Space Agency, and it's basically collaborating with a bunch of experts from America and Europe to try to understand what's going on in the Arctic, how it's changing across timescales and location scales and whether or not we have the opportunity to forecast methane and carbon that could be coming out of the permafrost.
00:20:14:23 - 00:20:51:16
Kimberley R. Miner
So permafrost is soil that's frozen for two years or more and it covers 24% of the land surface. So almost a quarter of the surface, a huge amount of land. And it's basically a bunch of dead stuff. It's detritus over years and years and years and years, years built up. And so when it falls because it's getting warmer in the Arctic, it's getting four times warmer in the Arctic than anywhere else on the planet, There's little microbes that eat all of the red stuff, just like in your tummy when you when you eat food, you've got microbes that digest it.
00:20:52:07 - 00:21:16:04
Kimberley R. Miner
And so when there's microbes that eat the dead stuff, they release methane and other forms of carbon gas into the atmosphere. So this process were to speed up. It happen really quickly. It would be a huge amount of methane released into the atmosphere, which, as we've discussed, is a really serious greenhouse gas. So it means that there would be a big warming that could potentially happen.
00:21:16:04 - 00:21:39:01
Christian Soschner
So we have basically a double effect when we produce in the Western society. More greenhouse gases just summarized it. We heat up the planet and this accelerates the melting of the ice and permafrost in the Arctic and Antarctica, which then accelerates the effect of warming the planet. Is it?
00:21:39:15 - 00:22:04:01
Kimberley R. Miner
Yes, that's the concern, is that it could accelerate the warming of the planet and the challenge is that right now humans are releasing the most carbon. But if we make the ecosystems so unstable that ecosystems start releasing carbon, you may have seen a report that when they were burning huge parts of the Amazon that it was releasing carbon, not taking carbon in.
00:22:04:14 - 00:22:17:13
Kimberley R. Miner
And if that happens, then we just have a ton of different places releasing carbon and very few places taking it up. And then that's where we start having very, very serious problems.
00:22:17:13 - 00:22:21:22
Christian Soschner
It's when we reach the point of no return, then this is.
00:22:22:10 - 00:22:46:23
Kimberley R. Miner
We're not sure. There have been a number of papers that have come out very recently about tipping points, which is what we call when the ecosystems functionally switch to a new state or collapse or start releasing carbon, whatever it looks like for that particular ecosystem. The earth is so, so complicated. If you just think about, again, your stomach, you don't know everything that's going on in your stomach.
00:22:46:23 - 00:23:05:14
Kimberley R. Miner
You don't know all the microbes and what they're all doing, and then you magnify that times the size of the entire planet. It's really difficult to understand everything that's happening all the same time. And then now we're adding unknown dynamics. We're adding a forces that we haven't seen before in the form of climate change. So we're working really hard to forecast.
00:23:05:15 - 00:23:30:12
Kimberley R. Miner
The changes are. But I am not a fortuneteller, so I'm not able to give you a specific date, just like I probably wouldn't be able to give you a specific date when you know something in your life is going to happen to you. I can't read the future. All we can do is we can look at the patterns and see the signs of what's going on on the planet and make our best guesses as to when those things would change or could change based on the patterns that we understand.
00:23:31:03 - 00:23:58:01
Christian Soschner
But for Justin, I come from business management economics, and I have a tendency of oversimplifying things and trying to simplify things to understand it better. So we're talking about a real pressing problem. It's not when we talk about the timescale, it's not something that can happen potentially in 400 years. It's a real pressing problem that should be solved in our lifetimes and not somewhere in the future.
00:23:59:02 - 00:24:28:11
Kimberley R. Miner
A paper just came out in nature saying that some researchers ran different models and they believe that we will have 1.5 warming in the next two years, which will cause again more further instability of ecosystems. And that could push us to two degrees, which is the absolute worst that we've forecast within the next few decades by 2050. So we're talking about something that really needs to be taken care of.
00:24:28:11 - 00:24:29:02
Kimberley R. Miner
Yesterday.
00:24:29:18 - 00:24:41:19
Christian Soschner
No. Yes, yesterday I got two degrees. Doesn't sound really, really, really dangerous to me. What are the consequences of two degrees increase in temperature on the planet?
00:24:42:15 - 00:25:09:11
Kimberley R. Miner
Well, they could be catastrophic depending on the location. Right. So we have not hit 1.5 degrees yet. We're already seeing a lot of snow that is gone in the Alps. We're seeing droughts across Europe. We're seeing flooding and very strong storms throughout the Americas. We're seeing significant loss of sea ice. We're seeing melting and thawing or permafrost and glaciers, like you said.
00:25:09:21 - 00:25:45:12
Kimberley R. Miner
And that all means potential sea level rise. So we're not even at 1.5 yet. And there are already this year or last year $300 million in damages per region in the US. And then there were 30 million people who were affected in the US directly by climate disasters. So I'm just throwing all these numbers at you to basically try and help understand that things are already kind of serious and we're we're asking for them to be more serious, more bad.
00:25:45:21 - 00:25:56:21
Kimberley R. Miner
And it seems to me that in my personal life, if things are already going badly, I would do everything I could to make it better, not to just continue making things worse.
00:25:56:21 - 00:26:25:23
Christian Soschner
You mentioned that we see a decrease in biodiversity so far as my understanding goes. I mean, we need to spell out diversity as a human race to live a healthy life so that we have enough to eat when biodiversity is decreased and we see species going extinct. I mean, at the end of the day, value chain nutrition wise is the human race.
00:26:25:23 - 00:26:32:12
Christian Soschner
So does it. Is there a potential risk that we also have to face extinction of the human race if we continue on to evolve?
00:26:33:18 - 00:26:56:16
Kimberley R. Miner
So I think that you're looking at this from a very economics perspective, which I value. There is more to biodiversity than the value chain, right? Like we are an intrinsic part of our ecosystem. Everything that you breathe, everything that you drink, like you said, everything that you eat, everything that you see is part of the biodiversity and the ecosystem.
00:26:56:22 - 00:27:20:01
Kimberley R. Miner
Think how lonely it would be if we woke up and there were no birds, just none. Think how weird it would be if in the summer the leaves barely grew. We're talking about the potential loss of all of our friends and relations across scales or plants and animals. I mean, this is much more serious than not having adequate resources.
00:27:20:12 - 00:27:43:08
Kimberley R. Miner
They also have intrinsic value, right? Everything on this planet has a value. And I think it's more than time for us to realize that as humans that all of these things that we have evolved with have importance and they have value regardless of what service we believe that they provide, because they provide much, much more to us than we probably understand.
00:27:44:07 - 00:28:09:21
Christian Soschner
Yeah, that's true. I couldn't disagree more today as it prepared for this recording. It was on your LinkedIn profile and I saw that there was a train accident in Ohio with the release of toxic chemicals and also learned from from doing the research that there is also research out that links extreme weather events to their decent spread of toxic chemicals.
00:28:10:02 - 00:28:12:18
Christian Soschner
Can you tell me a little bit more about this topic?
00:28:13:20 - 00:28:42:07
Kimberley R. Miner
Sure. So a growing concern for me is the way that things are moving in the environment and all of the different human inputs. So Ohio is a great example. There are, to my knowledge, just under ten chemicals that were either released or created because of the release. And many of them are extremely serious. Some of them were burned off by the remediation efforts.
00:28:42:07 - 00:29:10:12
Kimberley R. Miner
And when when you burn some of them, they make different goals. They go into the atmosphere. So we have this system where we are basically putting whatever we want into our entire ecosystem, whether it's native flame retardants, which cover so close to cover our mattresses, whether it's unintentional dumping or release of these chemicals in Ohio, or whether it's things that are being stored in the permafrost.
00:29:10:12 - 00:29:34:08
Kimberley R. Miner
And now they're going to thaw out. All of these are significant risks. And when we combine them, we're not even necessarily really sure what all the chemicals will do when they're combined. So it seems to me the absolute best thing to do is to stop putting all of these chemicals into the environment without thinking about where they're going to go, without thinking about how they could impact the local environment.
00:29:34:15 - 00:29:53:01
Kimberley R. Miner
And that's something that we've said in a bunch of different media, a bunch of different papers. We've had a couple of major climate change papers about it. This is a very important and serious thing for us to consider. It's not just microplastics, it's also things that we can't see, chemicals that we can't see that really impact life on earth.
00:29:53:01 - 00:30:05:24
Christian Soschner
And that's putting it into the atmosphere, to the environment. What is your recommendation to governments? How can they better contain toxic chemicals during disasters and also during normal life?
00:30:06:12 - 00:30:31:17
Kimberley R. Miner
Yeah, so I am not a politician. Unfortunately. I can't really talk about policy, but as a scientist I know that it's really important that things stay in their right place. So I wouldn't necessarily feel a bigger role of a chemical and then drink it because that's not the right place for that chemical. And it seems like it's an important for us to think about that when we make our laws and we make our regulations for all chemicals.
00:30:33:06 - 00:30:44:09
Christian Soschner
You said that you are the politician for the scientists. Let's talk a little bit about smoking. It's probably also one of your favorite topics, science, communication. How important is that these days?
00:30:45:18 - 00:31:05:14
Kimberley R. Miner
Well, I have been nothing but impressed by the younger generations who are really, really excited about learning about science, talking about science, helping each other understand science, helping people older than them understand science. And so I just want to be a part of that community that's engaging with the world around us and new and interesting and different ways.
00:31:05:17 - 00:31:30:12
Kimberley R. Miner
But it's also really, really important that we increase the diversity in science so that people of all different races, all different origins, all different genders can share their novel and breakthrough ideas to help all of humanity. And that's that's really the nature of science, to make it totally open, totally accessible, so that we get just the very best ideas on the planet that can help everything.
00:31:30:23 - 00:31:41:02
Kimberley R. Miner
And that's a huge part of why I described communication, just to make it clear that everyone is welcome and all ideas are welcome. And that sort of process is the science now.
00:31:41:04 - 00:31:59:01
Christian Soschner
And it seems that you and your teams are doing an excellent job, a fantastic job. I mean, you've got integration, international recognition in the BBC, New York Times. GQ And did you read it right? You also, in 2020 got a Guinness World Record in Science communication.
00:32:00:06 - 00:32:14:03
Kimberley R. Miner
Patient for climbing Mount Everest and taking samples was really different. Yes, we found the highest microplastics in the world. So quite a sad thing to have a Guinness World record for, but that's what it was for. Yes.
00:32:14:10 - 00:32:15:15
Christian Soschner
At the Mount Everest.
00:32:16:02 - 00:32:16:10
Kimberley R. Miner
Yeah.
00:32:16:19 - 00:32:28:02
Christian Soschner
Guess so. Basically plastic that was not brought there by someone who tried to claim the Mount Everest. Plus microplastics that somehow.
00:32:28:16 - 00:32:44:18
Kimberley R. Miner
Did properly a variety of sources. Some of it is definitely from the gear from the people climbing Mount Everest, but it's also been shown to be atmospherically moved. So there are microplastics in the atmosphere that come down through the rain and they can move it in the wind as well.
00:32:46:02 - 00:32:56:16
Christian Soschner
As also dance. Today on your LinkedIn profile that you asked people for recommendations. So if a title of of your new book, can you tell me a little bit more about this book? What's to you interest with it?
00:32:57:04 - 00:33:19:03
Kimberley R. Miner
So I'm working with Taylor Francis and the book will hopefully be out in 2024 talking about planning for climate change. So how should my generation, which is millennial, I mean, older, millennial and younger generations understand and think about climate change in the way that it impacts their lives? How do they plan for where should they live? What should they think about eating?
00:33:19:03 - 00:33:32:13
Kimberley R. Miner
Does everyone need to go vegan and go live in a cabin that's not very reasonable? What are the other options? And so just try to give people a way to think about climate change the way that it could impact them. That's healthy and helpful.
00:33:34:10 - 00:33:54:16
Christian Soschner
Yeah. And I'm a member of the Shard in Temple and it's part of a Richard Garrett lifestyle, and it's also a Buddhist temple. I think there is probably a lot of solution, not so much in Buddhism into are different religions on the planet and it's fine, but probably into lifestyle. So it's not overconsuming, not overusing the resources of the planet.
00:33:54:16 - 00:34:02:04
Christian Soschner
I also found when I researched your beta that you have a black belt. Is it also martial arts?
00:34:02:16 - 00:34:04:18
Kimberley R. Miner
Yes, I black belt in karate.
00:34:05:08 - 00:34:08:17
Christian Soschner
How is that? I wasn't. I used to practicing.
00:34:08:23 - 00:34:23:13
Kimberley R. Miner
Good. I actually moved it away from my dojo, so I am not actively practicing. Kamau But yes, I absolutely love the discipline and having fun with karate.
00:34:23:13 - 00:34:41:06
Christian Soschner
Yeah, that's true. That's true. I started with karate some when I was six, seven years old. Since then switched to more Japanese style, which in comments later in life I learned that close to my house, the subsidiary of the Shard in temporary opened and they start training with tertiary monks. It's it's great doing some exercise.
00:34:41:22 - 00:34:43:14
Kimberley R. Miner
We have a very impressive school.
00:34:44:03 - 00:34:59:22
Christian Soschner
It's coincidentally and it was sponsored to the temple in 2014. I think there's a lot in in Buddhist lifestyle when we talk about the future of climate science, where do you see it evolving in the next 5 to 10 years?
00:35:00:24 - 00:35:30:12
Kimberley R. Miner
Well, there's a lot of who are moving into the urban climate space, which is wonderful. There's people of all sectors, all disciplines, all backgrounds that are needed. We need communicators, We need people, like I said, who are taking action. We need researchers, we need thinkers, we need planners, we need artists, we need so many artists. There are all sorts of people who are moving into this field and we need them all there.
00:35:30:17 - 00:35:58:19
Kimberley R. Miner
We all need to be thinking about climate change and the way that it impacts our industries, our lives, because it's going to and it will be much, much better for us to think about it now than, you know, as the hurricane hits, whether it's metaphorical or actual, I think that in the next few years we're going to see an influx of more people, like I mentioned, but we're also potentially going to see more and more talent maturing for people who are just coming out of graduate school.
00:35:59:03 - 00:36:30:15
Kimberley R. Miner
And there is way more diversity, like I mentioned in this field than there ever has been in the western sciences in the past. And that is going to really benefit us. It's going to really benefit us to have people come from different backgrounds and have different stories of their lives and different ways of thinking so that it can really make us more diverse, more ingenious, bigger, more ideas, have better brainstorming sessions, and I'm really looking forward to that.
00:36:30:15 - 00:36:53:21
Kimberley R. Miner
I'm also really looking forward to the integration of Indigenous knowledge. So Western science has for a long time really dominated this conversation and, speak very, very loudly. But we have a bunch of people who are very, very good at science that looks different than Western science. It's not necessarily from the Enlightenment, it's from time immemorial time, much, much older than that.
00:36:54:03 - 00:37:05:17
Kimberley R. Miner
And I think that there's a huge drive and importance from those conversations that I'm looking forward to emerging even more strongly in the literature and just in the day to day media.
00:37:06:18 - 00:37:23:05
Christian Soschner
It's interesting, but I thought it was climate change. I was thinking about policymakers, politicians, scientists and the industry. And you mentioned other parties, for example, artists. Why, in your opinion, is it important to have artists in the conversations? Oh.
00:37:23:16 - 00:37:46:05
Kimberley R. Miner
Because artists are incredibly important to humans, where humans are good at that no other species or very few other species are bad. There are some birds that make just the most gorgeousness. I get that. But humans have this incredible drive and dedication to creating all different kinds of art. It's how we speak to each other. It's how we motivate each other.
00:37:46:05 - 00:38:07:02
Kimberley R. Miner
There's a new series coming out. I just saw an Apple Plus, I think it was where a bunch of very important Hollywood stars have put their time towards thinking about what climate change will look like in the future, how little impact people in a negative way for us to communicate with each other. And art is also the most important thing for driving me right.
00:38:07:02 - 00:38:28:03
Kimberley R. Miner
I want to make sure that I've got art of my life so I have something to work towards and to consider. As far as humans go, what makes humans special? I can go outside and see what makes birds and animals and plants special, but what makes humans special? And I would argue that one of the main things is art, and I think science is part of that.
00:38:28:11 - 00:38:30:03
Kimberley R. Miner
The fusion of art and science.
00:38:30:12 - 00:38:39:02
Christian Soschner
Yeah, it's true. It's true. So crazy to hear that's from you. That's also art has an very important place in our society.
00:38:39:15 - 00:38:41:12
Kimberley R. Miner
Yes, absolutely. Definitely.
00:38:42:16 - 00:39:09:20
Christian Soschner
When we think about the future, it's in the last 5 minutes of our interview and we would need to pick the three most important actions that we should take today to, change the fate of the human race and the planet. In terms of climate change, which reactions would you recommend that should be emphasized?
00:39:09:20 - 00:39:41:22
Kimberley R. Miner
It's hard to say those three, but let's just do it from the top of my head. I would say the number one would probably be stopped coming in carbon into the atmosphere. Probably number two would be to dedicate land space to wilderness or to indigenous stewardship. So meaning that we don't develop things, we don't cut down horse and build apartment buildings, we don't turn a bunch of the Arctic into mines, which is a terrible idea that a lot of people are suggesting.
00:39:43:05 - 00:40:15:09
Kimberley R. Miner
We preserve a huge amount of the Earth's surface or like I mentioned, give it to back to Indigenous stewardship. And then probably the third thing is just make sure that everyone knows, you know, speaking to friends, speaking to family members, speaking to all of our relations to make sure that we are all in conversation about the reality of what's happening on the planet where we live, the only planet where we live, the only planet we have the capability to live on, we can not move to Mars.
00:40:15:19 - 00:40:27:06
Kimberley R. Miner
We need to discuss with each other what's happening and what that means for us in our daily lives, for our children, for our grandchildren, and for all of their children and grandchildren.
00:40:27:06 - 00:40:32:20
Christian Soschner
So you don't trust Elon Musk that we can build sections of Mars?
00:40:33:05 - 00:40:34:22
Kimberley R. Miner
I have no comment about Elon Musk.
00:40:35:06 - 00:40:56:11
Christian Soschner
Sorry. Taking the carbon out of the atmosphere. Always thought planting trees might be a way out. And you mentioned it's the second measure that's wildness, that's giving back hope. Rebuilding the wildness might be part of the solution. Can you explain a bit more in detail?
00:40:56:11 - 00:41:17:02
Kimberley R. Miner
Sure. So it really depends on the regional ecosystem. And we we are getting a little bit close to time, but there's a bunch of different articles and studies out there that show that not only trees but lots and lots of different plants, species all take carbon. So it could be seaweed, it could be tundra, which is, you know, land with different plants on it.
00:41:17:02 - 00:41:40:21
Kimberley R. Miner
MEADOWS That's basically what a lot of plants eat. And so in order to have this regeneration, I guess, if you will, of the atmosphere moving our planet back to a more stable state, it is going to be critically important to make sure that we preserve a huge amount of the animals that are plant species in a way that we haven't done in the last hundred years.
00:41:41:04 - 00:41:51:06
Kimberley R. Miner
It's also really important for the biodiversity crisis, for obvious reasons. Everyone needs somewhere to live. That includes if you are a tree frog or if you are a human person.
00:41:52:02 - 00:42:10:01
Christian Soschner
So emphasizing this point that we need more trees, need more botanists towards politicians hopes contributing to climate change. It's good to know. Kimberly, we have 2 minutes left. Is there anything that you would like to tell the audience that I didn't mention I didn't didn't ask you in this podcast?
00:42:10:19 - 00:42:19:17
Kimberley R. Miner
No, Kristen, I just I appreciate your time and I hope that folks will be able to get some meaning from our conversation. And so really nice to talk with you today.
00:42:20:06 - 00:42:33:08
Christian Soschner
It was fantastic chatting with you. Thank you very much for your time and your great research and the great work and helping me and the audience understands the problem of climate change better and what we can do to change it. Thank you very much and have a great stay.
00:42:33:18 - 00:42:34:22
Kimberley R. Miner
Thanks, Kristen. You too.
00:42:35:13 - 00:42:36:10
Christian Soschner
See you today.
00:42:36:19 - 00:42:38:21
Kimberley R. Miner
Bye.