Climate Change. The Solutions Are There. Nathan Bindoff

Physical Oceanographer Nathan Bindoff is director of the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership whose focus is on the role of Antarctica in the global climate system, and the consequences for marine life in ecosystems. Professor Bindoff of the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic studies shares updates on recent climate change research.

Transcript
Catherine:

The 27th United nations climate change conference also known as COP, conference of the parties is happening in Egypt.

Catherine:

Today's guest has contributed his research to these conferences and to the intergovernmental panel on climate change or IPCC.

Catherine:

He has also contributed his positive imprints here on the show.

Catherine:

Episode 73 and 2019.

Catherine:

And then I remastered that episode and rereleased it episode 1 76, which is fabulous.

Catherine:

He is also heard on episode 165 in which I took quotes from many of the oceanographers and scientists that I've had on the show And edited an absolute phenomenal episode that I know you will enjoy episode 1 65.

Catherine:

Well, again, my guest professor, Nathan Bindoff is a professor of physical oceanography at the university of Tasmania's Institute for Marine and Antarctic studies.

Catherine:

And , my gosh, as I said, he's not new to these climate conferences.

Catherine:

He was the coordinating lead author on the ocean's chapter in the fourth intergovernmental panel on climate change in 2007 in which he was awarded a

Catherine:

And then again, in 2014, he took a lead in the fifth assessment, climate change report.

Catherine:

His research is world renowned with his most recent work, documenting the decline in oxygen content of the oceans and dynamics of the Southern ocean.

Catherine:

When he's not on a boat doing research, he tries to be on his own boat that he built from wood, a hobby that he so much enjoys.

Catherine:

And now he is here to provide climate change updates because you, my listeners specifically asked for professor Nathan Bindoff.

Catherine:

Professor Nathan Bindoff, thank you again for coming back to the show to share all of the updates that you have to offer.

Catherine:

Welcome, and it's so good to see you.

Nathan Bindoff:

Oh, thank you Catherine.

Nathan Bindoff:

It's lovely to be here and I did enjoy the last time I was on.

Catherine:

The listeners very much have enjoyed the information that you provided.

Catherine:

You provided a history on I P C C.

Catherine:

The intergovernmental panel on climate change and then your research.

Catherine:

There's a lot taking place since 2019 when we chatted last.

Nathan Bindoff:

I'm not sure if it's my, a new job relative to our last conversation, Catherine, but my job is the program leader or director or CEO of the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership.

Nathan Bindoff:

And that's actually a program, located in Hobart, hosted by the University of Tasmania its sole focus, the role of Antarctica in the global climate system, and the consequences for

Nathan Bindoff:

marine life, in primarily ecosystems and, , and so on.

Nathan Bindoff:

It started in June 15th, 2020.

Nathan Bindoff:

I just finished the special report on Oceans and Cryosphere in a changing climate,

Nathan Bindoff:

It's kind of a pleasure to talk about these, um, things.

Nathan Bindoff:

where you have just a little bit of extra time because then it allows you to kind of give up more information and kind of set a context and that, and that makes a difference.

Catherine:

Oh, absolutely.

Catherine:

And it's also your positive imprint.

Catherine:

So it's the legacy that you're laying out of your work that is always going to be there, and I just think that is exciting for you, because listeners were asking for Nathan Bindoff.

Catherine:

Oh, you have such a huge smile on your face, . Oh, that's grand.

Catherine:

That's grand

Nathan Bindoff:

that

Catherine:

Oh my goodness.

Catherine:

So, but uh, on the last episode you said that you have done your job and you have brought the research and the information to the world, and now it's

Catherine:

Are we doing what we need to be doing based on the research that you've done and the predictions that are out there?

Nathan Bindoff:

So it's best to actually, to just think of what the IPCC said that that really represents much more than myself.

Nathan Bindoff:

It represents, , hundreds of scientists.

Nathan Bindoff:

The report that Matt Parer was in the working Group one report, so that was the one about the physical science.

Nathan Bindoff:

And that report came out just before the conference of the parties number 26.

Nathan Bindoff:

And that report just highlighted the non-technical term here, absolute certainty that research community has around the changes and influence of climate change on the earth.

Nathan Bindoff:

And, and we are, um, very convinced so we use words like unequivocal, Human influence is unequivocal in the climate system.

Nathan Bindoff:

Or similar words.

Nathan Bindoff:

And what we are really saying is that the evidence is mounded up and this working group, one report that was just released before the conference of the parties made those points again.

Nathan Bindoff:

And then there's the new parts that are coming.

Nathan Bindoff:

In the earlier reports, if you go back.

Nathan Bindoff:

1990, when they first started out, those reports, they barely said that humans were causing climate change.

Nathan Bindoff:

This report says, Sure, it's, it's gotta be human influence.

Nathan Bindoff:

And then the second part is actually there are these whole new areas where we didn't understand before, but now we've really got strong inkling that these are going to change dramatically with climate change.

Nathan Bindoff:

And one of them, is around heat waves.

Nathan Bindoff:

Heat waves.

Nathan Bindoff:

You are experiencing heat waves in the Northern Hemisphere.

Nathan Bindoff:

We've just had a cold wave in Hobart, but those heat waves are going to be very significantly increased in frequency and intensity, and that message is so much stronger in that last report.

Nathan Bindoff:

You know, the, um, with one degree heat waves on the planet are five times more probable.

Nathan Bindoff:

With four degrees.

Nathan Bindoff:

They're actually 40 times more probable, and four Degrees is a possible choice that society could make.

Nathan Bindoff:

So if you think about it, the latest report that Matt Palmer contributed to, , and some parts led that report is really saying that , the consequences of climate change are non-trivial

Nathan Bindoff:

they're substantiated by the past that we've seen.

Nathan Bindoff:

They're not to be ignored, but they can be averted.

Nathan Bindoff:

And in fact, , the I P C C had a report on exactly that matter.

Nathan Bindoff:

It said that 1.5 degrees is a viable outcome actually if, if society makes the right choices, we can actually mitigate enough and have only a 1.5 degree temperature change.

Nathan Bindoff:

And that means that things like these heat waves, which have been terrible in the Northern hemisphere this summer, will be not much bigger than they currently are.

Nathan Bindoff:

And that would be a really good outcome, actually.

Nathan Bindoff:

That would be a really good outcome.

Nathan Bindoff:

We would avoid some of the worst excesses that are projected with, , high emissions type scenarios.

Nathan Bindoff:

So, so it's a choice.

Nathan Bindoff:

And the conference of the parties, , which came after the release of that report it has words like we will.

Nathan Bindoff:

Phase down coal.

Nathan Bindoff:

Now, phase down isn't as good as phase out.

Nathan Bindoff:

But here is a whole sector that the world has, , had the Industrial Revolution built on being phased down and out.

Nathan Bindoff:

The phase down is actually a great thing that we are talking about.

Nathan Bindoff:

And in that conference of the party, uh, 26, so this was the meeting held in Glascow led by the English government, , was talking about phase down.

Nathan Bindoff:

Uh, That's more or less the removal of a whole sector of, , the global economy.

Nathan Bindoff:

That kind of language is really great to hear because for me, we've been talking about the science and the science has been contested, and, for 30 years we're not having this contestation, , of the

Nathan Bindoff:

We're gonna phase out the internal combustion engine.

Nathan Bindoff:

So if you think about it, these are the sort of specific solutions you, we need desperately need to actually, , make the curve for reductions of emissions.

Nathan Bindoff:

Emissions have to go to zero.

Nathan Bindoff:

That's a big call, that's a fantastic transformation.

Nathan Bindoff:

And getting it to zero really means we gotta get on, her feet this decade and have a very strong downward trajectory by the end of this decade.

Nathan Bindoff:

So there's a lot of work, a lot of implementation to make the solutions come together.

Nathan Bindoff:

So from my perspective, it's really good to hear people talking about those sorts of things, actually.

Nathan Bindoff:

And of course it does mean, my work is done There are other climate scientists who are gonna keep the pressure up, of course, and talk about how these marine heat

Nathan Bindoff:

All these things.

Nathan Bindoff:

How that consequences for wildfires impact on Bush, how the ecosystems will actually

Nathan Bindoff:

suffer as a consequence itself, droughts, fire, And these things collectively are putting pressure on the global ecosystems.

Nathan Bindoff:

So language on solutions, mitigation of climate change is, is actually genuine good news, it is a human problem, which means of course humans can fix it.

Nathan Bindoff:

It's not something mysterious.

Catherine:

You're very optimistic.

Catherine:

I'm your positive imprint.

Catherine:

I am supposed to be optimistic, I have students that I had years ago in third grade when I was teaching and we did so much for the environment and even back then we were talking about climate change.

Catherine:

I spoke to one of these gals who's now 26, and she said, I don't know if I have a future because we were working on climate change and all of these other issues back when I was in third grade

Catherine:

and I don't feel like anything's moved.

Catherine:

And this is coming from a 26 year old who is very active and is out there trying to change the world for the better.

Catherine:

Society does , need to make the right choice.

Catherine:

And I know it has to be collectively.

Nathan Bindoff:

Absolutely.

Nathan Bindoff:

It has to be big widespread.

Nathan Bindoff:

It has to be, this decade has to be this decade.

Nathan Bindoff:

So it is urgent.

Nathan Bindoff:

There's no doubt about that, Catherine.

Nathan Bindoff:

No doubt about that.

Nathan Bindoff:

And, and the more rapidly we do it, it's always better.

Nathan Bindoff:

The outcome is always better the more rapidly we do it.

Nathan Bindoff:

And, to achieve 1.5 degrees

Nathan Bindoff:

you really need to peak in the next few years, literally in the next few years.

Nathan Bindoff:

And I'm just looking at a graph to my left and it, and it kind of is peaked, it's kind of flat, it's not quite going down right.

Nathan Bindoff:

And we need it to go down.

Nathan Bindoff:

Last year, of course, isn't so long ago.

Nathan Bindoff:

Right.

Nathan Bindoff:

This year has changed quite dramatically.

Nathan Bindoff:

, but on the other hand, there's a 27 meeting coming up this year and there will be a discussion around at that meeting very much around are the nations tracking?

Nathan Bindoff:

So many nations will be a little bit exposed on how they haven't, uh, perhaps tracked as well as they ought.

Nathan Bindoff:

And this is the beauty of the Paris Agreement that came out in 2015, the Paris Agreement, which replaced the kyodo agreement, the Paris Agreement made it possible.

Nathan Bindoff:

For the nations to say what they would do and then actually to track and review what they do.

Nathan Bindoff:

And so what we have now is a much more, closed system in the sense that it now includes doing what you said you would do , Right?

Nathan Bindoff:

That's what will happen with the review.

Nathan Bindoff:

Kind of accountability.

Nathan Bindoff:

And you have to understand that there's an enormous inertia in the system as well, Right?

Nathan Bindoff:

We, we've already committed to, um, a lot of.

Nathan Bindoff:

Uh, past use of fossil fuels and current use of fossil fuels.

Nathan Bindoff:

And so you actually have to unwind that economic system.

Nathan Bindoff:

This sector is, I think, $8 trillion or something similar like that.

Nathan Bindoff:

It's a huge amount of money compared to the amount I get for research Um, and that means that you have And that means you have to unwind sort of entrench systems and replace them with new systems.

Nathan Bindoff:

And, and so I, I understand the frustration of your student.

Nathan Bindoff:

I, I can fully see how she would be a little bit disillusioned and yes, it's urgent and it's challenging and we may not make the 1.5, but the more we do all the time is only the right thing to be doing.

Nathan Bindoff:

And so increasingly there are things that are actually quite possible.

Nathan Bindoff:

Actually in Australia and elsewhere in the world, the cheapest fomr of energy is actually wind power.

Nathan Bindoff:

And the second most cheap, uh, energy is solar panels, solar electricity.

Nathan Bindoff:

And in the case of, Australia, the difficulty is to figure out how to make it reliable so that you can meet the peaks and troughs satisfactorily.

Nathan Bindoff:

And that requires new investments and there's chances to gain the system.

Nathan Bindoff:

And so government interventions are required.

Nathan Bindoff:

But an example I like is that in 2012, the South Australian government, one of the states of, of Australia, decided that they would meet their 2020 target with 20% reduction in emissions, 20% renewable,

Nathan Bindoff:

So they overshot the target and were generating, um, 30% of their power supply.

Nathan Bindoff:

And the point I'm really making is actually with a concerted effort with the right policies in place and they have to be a broad spectrum of policies.

Nathan Bindoff:

Policies that will address the biggest consumers and users, generators to the smallest consumers, generators, so that they are all empowered to make the sorts of changes.

Nathan Bindoff:

And that is the nut of it.

Nathan Bindoff:

The nut of it is a sustained set of policies at the country level, which allows these things to be addressed and allows the transformation to happen.

Nathan Bindoff:

And, and maybe it's true that we need to have a kind of a war footing and a war footing, which is you combat climate change.

Nathan Bindoff:

The solutions are there.

Nathan Bindoff:

Countries can do it.

Nathan Bindoff:

There's enough sunlight, there's enough wind, there's um, other things that you need to make.

Nathan Bindoff:

And we desperately need the energy.

Nathan Bindoff:

You know, I like to be warm.

Nathan Bindoff:

I love energy.

Nathan Bindoff:

I use it all the time.

Nathan Bindoff:

I can't go without it in reality, but we can have it.

Nathan Bindoff:

So my feeling is that there are solutions there.

Nathan Bindoff:

It does require concerted will and that is where the most inertia, it's that social license.

Nathan Bindoff:

Right.

Nathan Bindoff:

So that's why my job's done.

Nathan Bindoff:

I'm now being an expert in areas of policy, in areas which are completely outside my real expertise, and how dare I do that as a scientist.

Catherine:

Oh, so, uh, , that makes me laugh because, uh, one of the oceanographers I had on the show who you know quite well, Helen Phillips, and she mentioned the exact thing about, well, scientists, we aren't trained

Catherine:

Uh, society is wanting more from you.

Nathan Bindoff:

It's odd, isn't it?

Nathan Bindoff:

It's it's odd, isn't it?

Nathan Bindoff:

So you in a, in a sense, you're right.

Nathan Bindoff:

The scientists provide the bad news, right?

Nathan Bindoff:

We tell you how the planet has changed.

Nathan Bindoff:

We sometimes say how terrible the future could be if we make those choices, right?

Nathan Bindoff:

If we make those choices, if we choose the high emissions pathway, or if we mitigate too slowly, we will cause these sorts of dangerous things and they are dangerous at some level, right?

Nathan Bindoff:

If the Greenland ice sheet, uh, is committed, And we may be there actually, we may actually be there to being melting away completely, or by completely I really mean to give four meters

Nathan Bindoff:

In the latest IPCC report, they actually say 15 meters and above

Nathan Bindoff:

is possible in, um, in the case where things we did not understand actually occur, and that report 15 meters, it's in the report and all the governments agreed to it.

Nathan Bindoff:

Remember that summary for policy makers every government agreed to that.

Nathan Bindoff:

So the governments understand that that is a possibility.

Nathan Bindoff:

It's a lot of people were signing off on that piece of written work.

Nathan Bindoff:

And it's a high impact, event that could occur as a consequence of the emissions we make.

Nathan Bindoff:

So, so where, that's where the bad is normally.

Nathan Bindoff:

Um, and it's remarkable, I think how much climate scientists really try and communicate those risks.

Nathan Bindoff:

They're out there talking to those risks.

Nathan Bindoff:

What has changed in this Covid period actually, Catherine, is that there's been quite a bit of climate activism.

Nathan Bindoff:

There's been quite a bit of d iscussion by the likes of, uh, Mike Carney.

Nathan Bindoff:

Mike Carney used to be the, , Chancellor of the Ex Checker, , in the uk.

Nathan Bindoff:

He has been very strident about, uh, taking and factoring in climate change in the industry sector.

Nathan Bindoff:

Those things have changed actually since 2007 when Al Gore and I P C C won the uh, Nobel Peace Prize since 2013 when we wrote the fifth assessment report;

Catherine:

I was very before the time.

Nathan Bindoff:

you were

Catherine:

Yeah.

Nathan Bindoff:

I think there's been a lot of progress at moving from the science to actually that interface that goes to implementation, social acceptance, and the social license to enact it.

Nathan Bindoff:

It's all very well to have the science, but the science doesn't make any progress until actually society accepts it and acts on it.

Nathan Bindoff:

and that step is, gaining momentum.

Nathan Bindoff:

It may not be fast enough relative to the emissions that are going on to creating the real solution, but I talked about the COP 26, which was last year

Nathan Bindoff:

Phase down of coal.

Nathan Bindoff:

Those things at the sector level are what we need and that's genuinely talked about.

Nathan Bindoff:

And so I think we have moved, maybe not fast enough.

Nathan Bindoff:

I get that.

Nathan Bindoff:

But I, we have moved and you can see, um, the automobile industry and aviation industry are all gearing up for actually a greener world as best as they can.

Nathan Bindoff:

And the challenge is actually to get onto that pathway.

Nathan Bindoff:

We have solutions.

Nathan Bindoff:

Get onto that pathway and make it happen.

Nathan Bindoff:

And you can see it happening.

Nathan Bindoff:

It just needs a little bit more momentum and then actually it will flip.

Nathan Bindoff:

It will flip.

Catherine:

And I do agree with you, and I do think you are right because we do have renewable energy that is being invested heavily into now.

Catherine:

A lot of big investors and small investors like me and like you who are investing in it.

Catherine:

So there is a change that is happening.

Catherine:

I would like to see it move along faster and quicker.

Catherine:

For me, if you remember from the last episode, for me, a lot of it is about the ecosystems and the environment because the wildlife live there and.

Catherine:

Our food, is part of that ecosystem.

Catherine:

When I look at ecosystems and I look at the suffering of animals, that's where my activism comes in because they don't have a voice, die with whatever choices we make.

Nathan Bindoff:

Or they're forced to migrate.

Nathan Bindoff:

So one of the results in the, report that I was involved in in 2019 was that the fish species of the world that reside near the equator will move away

Nathan Bindoff:

They're doing this because the surface of the oceans is warmer and the observations of fish actually show us that.

Nathan Bindoff:

And so it's exactly what you are talking about.

Nathan Bindoff:

In that report, we did an assessment of all the sort of marine coastal environments that are on the planet.

Nathan Bindoff:

So the coral reefs, the rocky beaches, the kelps, uh, environments and all of them are actually at risk.

Nathan Bindoff:

You know, we know things about those environments, about the animals that live in them, how they respond to temperature.

Nathan Bindoff:

And in every case, the environments were never improving for them.

Nathan Bindoff:

They're actually, , in a negative trajectory from climate change.

Nathan Bindoff:

And, and that negative trajectory is because we are warming the world

Nathan Bindoff:

universally and there are consequences that go for that.

Nathan Bindoff:

So most of the species that are mobile fish, for example, are actually demonstrably moving towards to the poles.

Nathan Bindoff:

And there are just a few areas, the Arctic and the high Antarctic pole near the Antarctic continent, which are actually becoming kind of

Nathan Bindoff:

more productive, but the rest are becoming less productive.

Nathan Bindoff:

Now, this has consequences for human communities.

Nathan Bindoff:

Human communities typically live the small island developing states.

Nathan Bindoff:

There's, uh, 65 million people who live on those, the low lying areas around the world 680 million people in a population of a bit over 9 billion.

Nathan Bindoff:

That's actually a substantial fraction.

Nathan Bindoff:

And for the small island developing states, actually what's going on there is that they draw often, uh, protein from wild fisheries and those fish

Nathan Bindoff:

And we estimate it in that report that the wild fishery would decline 4%.

Nathan Bindoff:

I think it was 4% per degree of global warming.

Nathan Bindoff:

, so less fish catch, the fish catch would decline by 4% per degree of global warming.

Nathan Bindoff:

And so if you put the footprint of where those changes are happening with human communities, you can see actually this is additional pressure on human communities most often didn't do the emissions.

Nathan Bindoff:

And having to suffer the impacts.

Nathan Bindoff:

So there's a, there's a sort of perverse outcome in the way some of these emissions and their impacts and consequences has on the human communities that depend on those ecosystems.

Nathan Bindoff:

And so, so I think this is exactly the point you are making.

Nathan Bindoff:

You're making it as an activist, but I can tell you the observations support the idea that these impacts are negative And the less impact, the more we can mitigate, the better the outcomes.

Catherine:

One of the things that you have done, and I just wanna to just reiterate quickly.

Catherine:

You as a researcher, as a scientist, you and your team did discover the glaciers in Antarctica were melting on the underside due to the current from the different oceans meeting and warming up underneath.

Catherine:

And the other was you predicted before it ever happened you predicted the fire catastrophes, and you have predicted so much more based on the research.

Catherine:

We are in a state of urgency.

Nathan Bindoff:

We are in a state of urgency.

Nathan Bindoff:

Catherine.

Nathan Bindoff:

I, I have to say that in fact all this sort of research is shared in the community.

Nathan Bindoff:

We, we scaffold off other people's ideas.

Nathan Bindoff:

We, uh, collaborate actually the scientific community in climate science cause it's open science, uh, collaborate all the time.

Nathan Bindoff:

The science community has talked about how those sort of extremes, wildfires and some of the consequences of wildfires on ecosystems in the terrestrial space.

Nathan Bindoff:

Cuz I had a group that worked on that for 10 years.

Nathan Bindoff:

And our understanding of these other things, like how much the oceans are melting, Antarctica, quite different to Greenland.

Nathan Bindoff:

Those things have come out of the scientific community.

Nathan Bindoff:

You're quite right and I'm really glad to have been part of that.

Nathan Bindoff:

It.

Nathan Bindoff:

It's a funny thing.

Nathan Bindoff:

I never understood.

Nathan Bindoff:

I would, uh, as a research back in when I did my PhD, I never understood that I would be doing something that was so relevant to the whole of the population of this planet.

Nathan Bindoff:

I never understood that it is an accident, but actually it's pretty exciting kind of thing to have been involved in.

Nathan Bindoff:

And, you know, I've been in this business for 30 years, roughly.

Nathan Bindoff:

Uh, looking at how the oceans are changed, how the atmospheres changed and some of the dangers that come with it.

Nathan Bindoff:

And I have to say, um, it's been really nice to be relevant.

Nathan Bindoff:

And I have been relevant as a consequence.

Catherine:

absolutely.

Catherine:

And I'm honored to be in your circle of friends

Catherine:

so anything on the decline in oxygen

Catherine:

content?

Nathan Bindoff:

Oh, finally published that this year.

Nathan Bindoff:

I think

Catherine:

Ah, okay.

Nathan Bindoff:

Some science takes a while to do, and that's perhaps something that's not understood well.

Nathan Bindoff:

It's actually worthwhile to reflect on how long Catherine, it takes , for science to uncover things and to mature it, to give it the, the absolute sense that we're

Nathan Bindoff:

So if you think about it, there has been an investment in climate science, an exploration of the earth, , and it has serendipitously, in a way, allowed us to actually be aware of the influences of humans on this planet.

Nathan Bindoff:

And if we'd never made that investment at all, if we'd never made that investment at all

Nathan Bindoff:

which is hard to imagine actually.

Nathan Bindoff:

It's hard to imagine that we would never have explored the oceans never made the measurements, but if we'd never done it, we would not be anywhere

Nathan Bindoff:

The oceans are incredibly important part of that climate system.

Nathan Bindoff:

It's actually important because it takes up 90% of the energy that's being trapped by, uh, that changing composition of the atmosphere.

Nathan Bindoff:

It actually accounts for a significant fraction of the oxygen we breathe, uh, in this planet because actually there's all these green animals in the surface, waters that are, uh, respiring oxygen.

Nathan Bindoff:

And so the oceans are a critical element.

Nathan Bindoff:

And if we hadn't made those small investments, we wouldn't know quite as much as we do.

Nathan Bindoff:

We would not be able to make quite as compelling a case as we are around climate change.

Catherine:

Well thank you for that.

Catherine:

You are an internationally well known physical oceanographer there from the University of Tasmania at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, But you are also a person who loves to build boats.

Catherine:

Have you been able to be out on your boat that you built?

Nathan Bindoff:

Uh, yes.

Nathan Bindoff:

I.

Nathan Bindoff:

Built a kayak, a beautiful kayak, which is the follow one to my rather beautiful American designed rowing boat.

Nathan Bindoff:

And I have been out on my rowing boat a little bit, a little bit.

Nathan Bindoff:

We rode into Hasting Bay, which is, uh, south of Hobart and spent the day on the beach and in the water.

Nathan Bindoff:

and I've done a little bit in my kayak, but not as much because I can't quite sit in it.

Nathan Bindoff:

and paddle for hours.

Catherine:

You're a little bit too tall.

Nathan Bindoff:

for me, so I might have to . Yeah, my knees are too high.

Nathan Bindoff:

Uh, it's to, it's too snug a fit is what I really mean to say

Catherine:

Well back to the drawing board.

Nathan Bindoff:

Oh yes, there's another boat in me.

Nathan Bindoff:

Um, not another house, but another boat.

Nathan Bindoff:

And so I'd love to build another couple

Catherine:

I bid you the best of times in your boats, whether you're making them or sitting in them.

Catherine:

, enjoy them.

Nathan Bindoff:

Thank, thank you very much, Catherine, and, and as always, it's a pleasure to, pleasure to be here talking about, some science that I've got to love.

Catherine:

Well, and I love the science and I absolutely love talking to you, and I enjoy it.

Catherine:

The last episode you had to run very quickly because you were meeting with your premier.

Catherine:

I think you were going to be talking about fires actually.

Nathan Bindoff:

Y Yes.

Nathan Bindoff:

So I met with the premier of Tasmania, and he, he was very engaged.

Nathan Bindoff:

, Tasmania is another one of those success stories.

Nathan Bindoff:

It actually is a, uh, already a carbon net zero country, uh, state if you like, and, Unlike the rest of the world, we have, uh, negative emissions.

Nathan Bindoff:

So what's actually happening is this date is basically compensating the emissions from cars and agriculture by the growth of forests.

Nathan Bindoff:

So, so that is a success story and it's right here where I live.

Nathan Bindoff:

We can't sustain that for a long, long time, but actually we are net emissions today,

Catherine:

Well, that is awesome.

Catherine:

That Yes, that is awesome.

Catherine:

That is so wonderful to hear.

Catherine:

It can be done.

Catherine:

And so to end the show, what are professor Nathan Bindoff's last inspiring words,

Nathan Bindoff:

To finish actually, uh, which would be kind of, um, the relevant point, Catherine, what I would finish with is, there's still, uh, plenty of work to do to keep

Nathan Bindoff:

It's keeping the science current and alive that then drives the decision making and the values that around, uh, success actually.

Nathan Bindoff:

And, and so we can't fail in doing that.

Nathan Bindoff:

So my job's not done.

Nathan Bindoff:

It's just probably time for someone else to do it better.

Catherine:

Professor Nathan Bindoff, I'm so thrilled to have you on the show no, nobody can do it better.

Catherine:

They'll just do it differently.

Catherine:

You have been awesome for the planet, and I thank you for all of the research that you've provided, thank you again so much for sharing your inspiration,

Catherine:

and you have so many memories of being out on the boat that I just would love to sit down and just talk about things.

Catherine:

The life on a boat, on a ship.

Nathan Bindoff:

Thank.

Nathan Bindoff:

Thank you, Catherine.

Nathan Bindoff:

I'll tell you about the fire story one day,

Catherine:

Okay.

Catherine:

All right.

Catherine:

Thank you.

Catherine:

To learn more about professor Nathan, Bindoff and his research go to university of Tasmania website, UTAS.EDU.AU and search button for Nathan Bindoff.

Catherine:

N a T H a N B I N D O F F or simply Google Nathan Bindoff.

Catherine:

There is loads of information on his climate change research.

Catherine:

Well, thank you for participating in the ways you are reducing or eliminating single-use plastics, other types of plastics, or even nylon.

Catherine:

Thank you.

Catherine:

End plastic pollution.

Catherine:

Well, I have the winning names now from this contest, the two winners are S Wong of Malaysia, S Wong owns a thrift store and has discontinued the use of plastic bags and other types of single use plastics in the store.

Catherine:

Having a thrift store is also something sustainable.

Catherine:

And the second winner is CGL Roth of United States who turns down the use of plastic bags, including turning down plastic bags from the takeout restaurant industry.

Catherine:

Congratulations to both of you.

Catherine:

Thank you for entering.

Catherine:

I appreciate all of you.

Catherine:

Coming in December is a guest whose music is dear to my heart, as well as of course his positive imprints.

Catherine:

I can't wait to share with you.

Catherine:

Follow subscribe or download this podcast.

Catherine:

Your positive imprint.

1 Comment

  1. Terry T on 12/17/2022 at 2:02 AM

    Because climate change is such a critical issue for every human on the planet fo address, I’m delighted that Nathan is continuing his very important research. It’s scary to face the facts, but as he said there are things we can do. Another great interview. I love his love of boats and being out on the water.

Leave a Comment