global warming

Wednesday briefing: Arizona abortion ruling; James and Jennifer Crumbley; ‘forever chemicals’; Boeing whistleblower; and more

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Thursday briefing: House passes bill that could ban TikTok; Trump classified documents hearing; Paul Alexander; and more

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In a giant conference hall in Glasgow, leaders from around the world have gathered for the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Climate Change Convention, or COP26. This is the 26th such session.

Many say this may be the last chance to avoid climate disaster. Will anything change this time?

Guest: Somini Sengupta, the international climate reporter for The New York Times. 

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Background reading: 

• The opening day of the COP26 summit was heavy on dire warnings and light on substantive proposals.
• We have a live briefing from the conference, where the focus is now turning to behind-the-scenes talks and how to finance the different proposals to combat climate change.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

We had our fun last week, exploring how progress in renewable energy and electric vehicles may help us combat encroaching climate change. This week we’re being a bit more hard-nosed, taking a look at what’s currently happening to our climate. Michael Mann is one of the world’s leading climate scientists, and also a dedicated advocate for improved public understanding of the issues. It was his research with Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes that introduced the “hockey stick” graph, showing how global temperatures have increased rapidly compared to historical averages. We dig a bit into the physics behind the greenhouse effect, the methods that are used to reconstruct temperatures in the past, how the climate has consistently been heating up faster than the average models would have predicted, and the relationship between climate change and extreme weather events. Happily even this conversation is not completely pessimistic — if we take sufficiently strong action now, there’s still time to avert the worst possible future catastrophe.

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Michael Mann received his Ph.D. in Geology and Geophysics from Yale University. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Pennsylvania State University, with joint appointments in the Departments of Geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. He is the director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center. He is the author of over 200 scientific publications and four books. His most recent book is The Tantrum that Saved the World, a “carbon-neutral kids’ book.”

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It's a confusing part of climate change when it seems winter is as cold as ever, but as global temperatures creep ever so slightly higher, a cascade of catastrophic events will almost surely follow. The ball is in humanity's court.

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