What happens if the Amazon rainforest stops absorbing carbon and starts releasing it? Do we need geoengineering to help us cool an overheating planet? And how can developing countries balance environmental preservation with economic development?
This week on Cleaning Up, Baroness Bryony Worthington sits down with Thelma Krug, a renowned Brazilian scientist and mathematician, and former vice chair of the IPCC, to explore these critical questions.
Krug offers an insider's perspective, drawing from her decades of experience monitoring the Amazon rainforest and participating in international climate negotiations.
The conversation ranges from the alarming transformation of the Amazon from a carbon sink to a potential carbon source, to the controversial realm of solar radiation management. As it prepares to host COP30 in Belem in November, Krug provides nuanced insights into Brazil's challenges, the complexities of global climate policy, and the potential for innovative solutions like biofuels and international collaboration.
Leadership Circle:
Cleaning Up is supported by the Leadership Circle, and its founding members: Actis, Alcazar Energy, Davidson Kempner, EcoPragma Capital, EDP of Portugal, Eurelectric, the Gilardini Foundation, KKR, National Grid, Octopus Energy, Quadrature Climate Foundation, SDCL and Wärtsilä. For more information on the Leadership Circle, please visit https://www.cleaningup.live.
Discover more:
• Sierra Leone special: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-5QjSfy2SM
• COP30 website: https://cop30.br/en
• Degrees Global Forum: https://degreesglobalforum.org
• Episode 168 with Anand Gopal: https://youtu.be/33QiMC4nG1k
BW
Because of changes in temperature and precipitation, we might lose the Amazon as a sink. How worried are you about that?
TK
We are absolutely worried. I am absolutely worried because we have already moved from being a sink of carbon, to being a source. So some papers do mention that. It might not be something permanent, it might be at some months of the year. However, even with what we see today, the droughts that have been going through, and the big biomass fires that we are having. You know, even myself, I initially thought that the forest would not be set on fire because they are quite humid. I grew up with that understanding that forests do not go on fire, but now we understand that that's not completely right.
BW
Hello, I'm Bryony Worthington, and this is Cleaning Up. I recently attended a conference on the subject of climate interventions, sometimes referred to as geoengineering. Over 300 people gathered in Cape Town to explore what if anything could and should be done to cool the Earth. While some may feel this is a taboo conversation, increasingly, people from different walks of life are becoming sufficiently concerned about escalating climate impacts that they're beginning to ask the question: could we buy ourselves some time to adapt and try to stabilize our changing climatic conditions? One of these people is Thelma Krug, a scientist, former Brazilian lead negotiator and major figure in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I wanted to ask Thelma what led her to come to this conference, what her views are on the climate negotiations and the IPCC, and what she will be looking out for ahead of the upcoming Brazil-hosted climate conference later this year. Please join me in welcoming Thelma Krug to Cleaning Up.
BW
So Thelma, can I call you Thelma?
TK
Yeah, sure.
BW
So glad that you could join me here today on Cleaning Up. I wanted to start, as we always do, with our guests, by you introducing yourself in your own words, please.
TK
I am Thelma Krug, and then I am a mother of one big boy now, and the grandmother of two children. Well, one is 22 already, and another one is 12. So that's a little bit from outside my professional life, which I like to show to people as well.
BW
Let's talk about your professional life, though, because, well, let's talk it through. You're a Brazilian scientist.
TK
Yes, I am a Brazilian scientist, now retired from the National Institute for Space Research, where I have served as a federal servant for 37 years, and before that, I was in the academic world as director of the engineering school in my city, which is São José dos Campos near Sao Paulo. So that's a little bit. My background is mathematics. So I have done my bachelor's and master's degree in the US, and then my PhD in Sheffield in the UK.
BW
And how did you apply those mathematical skills and that technical background, that engineering background, to the question of climate change? What did you focus on?
TK
I think that when we do mathematics, we have a very deterministic mind, and so it helps a lot to focus your thoughts without deviating too much. It was very interesting that I have been a negotiator for Brazil for many years in the climate change convention — and in particular during the Kyoto Protocol — and when we are doing some of the rules, it was so much easier for me to express those rules in mathematical terms, like if you did this somatoreum here, you're going to get there… but it scares everybody, right? Because we don't use this, because very few people understand a somatoreum, or an integral, so we cannot use that language. But it would put in one line, 10 lines of the decision.
BW
but famously, the UN negotiations on climate change are all about words, right? Sometimes individual words and individual sentences can take a week to negotiate, right? Was that frustrating as a scientist?
TK
Definitely, and I usually say that our language in the conventions is encrypted, right? Because you need to reach consensus. So it's very common that when you finish the negotiations and you have a decision, you have loose wording that might give room to interpretation. And so that's interesting and a little bit frustrating as well, right? Because they spend weeks working on the language, and all of a sudden you may have it misinterpreted when you leave, and have other people understanding it differently to you.
BW
Sometimes the ambiguity is deliberate, right?
TK
Oh yes, yeah, yes.
BW
So just staying on the theme of mathematics, climate can be reduced down to a numbers game, right? There's the concentrations in the atmosphere, implied warming that that gives you, and then there's the emission balances, the budgets for emissions. And as you say, you worked on Kyoto. That was a very numerical agreement, right, kind of top down limits based?
TK
Yeah, I thought that that was one of the advantages of Kyoto, because at that time… okay, so we had only the developed countries right, most of them, and some left afterwards. But anyway, it was in the decision the level of emission reduction or limitations of greenhouse gasses that each country would have. That was extremely difficult. Extremely difficult. And then you had these three flexible mechanisms, one that was highly applied, with developing countries as well, the clean development mechanism, which stimulated several projects in Brazil. And so it was nice to see that construction, despite the difficulty of it. If I contrast it with the Paris Agreement, I think that it has a big plus, because it brought all the countries together, right? So you brought developing countries, you brought developed countries. But this time, we lost the quantitative emission reductions, which we do every five years. But I could say that it is in homeopathic doses. I don't really know where we are going to end.
BW
So now that we've kind of lost that quantitative element to this agreement, or at least the top down element, you've been looking at NDCs, how are we doing? Like, how is this voluntary, more inclusive process doing?
TK
UK is doing pretty well.
BW
Oh, the UK. I don't mean ‘we’ as in the UK, I mean, ‘we’ as in globally,
TK
No globally, obviously. My interest is looking at the G20 for instance, and also to BRICs or BRICS+ now that we have expanded. But many of the countries that we have in the BRICS_ have such a small contribution to the global emissions, so I'm not too much interested in those. I am more interested in knowing how the G20, who is responsible for approximately 75% of the global emissions, is doing. And then obviously, BRICS brings a little bit more of these countries into this. So altogether, I'm looking at 23 countries and looking if they have, for instance, as a starting point, to see how much they could fulfill the requirements in terms of showing how much they are progressing in their implementation, in progress in the implementation of their targets. So that's an interesting part, right? And understanding also the barriers. So if they are not doing so well, what is it that is refraining them from getting into the target that they first thought at some point that they could accomplish.
BW
And roughly speaking, of those 23 countries — red, amber, green — how worried are you?
TK
You know, it's interesting, because all the countries that I have seen say they are aligned with the 1.5°C limit, like other countries. However, there is no methodology that has been set to really say you're aligned or not. So every country is using their own sense on that, or their own models to say, ‘Well, we are on track.’ When I go to some international initiatives, independent initiatives, there are at least a couple of them who track every single country’s target, none of them are on track to 1.5°C, and several of them are not even on track to 2°C. So they are being critically insufficient in what they are proposing in terms of target to be aligned with 1.5°C. So I think that this is an interesting issue, I would say. And because, obviously, the convention did not set a methodology by which countries would say that. So some countries are being assessed in terms of the carbon budget themselves. What they say, it's their carbon budget, their share, the part of their contribution to this, right? Which is also interesting.
BW
There’s also a kind of historic liability aspect to their calculations.
TK
Oh yes, because you’re talking about the historically cumulative emissions of CO2 to define your carbon budget.
BW
So you were the negotiator for Brazil for a number of years. Was that in parallel, that you were also at the IPCC, or was that afterwards?
TK
Well, that was interesting. I was in the IPCC, elected in 2002. And then from 2002 to 2009 and then another election, 2009 to 2015 and at that time, I was also negotiating for Brazil, representing Brazil in the negotiations. However, when Brazil nominated me for chairmanship of the IPCC, many countries thought that there was a conflict of interest for me to be on the scientific side and also on the policy side — although I don't think that is naturally what happens, many countries felt uncomfortable. And so Brazil agreed that if I were elected vice chair at that occasion, I would not be representing Brazil in the negotiations. So I left. I loved to do it, by the way, because I think it's quite challenging. And I had the opportunity also, when we were discussing the Kyoto Protocol, to chair for a couple of years, the rules for, in particular, for the land use component of the Kyoto Protocol.
BW
So I have two follow up questions I'd like to pursue here. Perhaps the first one is: your background is with, despite having this mathematical background, you went into probably the most complex part of this equation, which is the land use in the forestry. So can you tell me a little bit about your research there, and what did you focus on? As you say, you're quite focused, what particular aspect of land use and forestry did you work on?
TK
Let's see how this started, right. When I came back from my PhD, I started in Brazil, or was designated by the director at that time, to head the remote sensor group. The people that were using remotely sensed data, satellite imagery, mainly for applications, right? So at that time, we already doing the official estimates for the deforestation in Brazil, the gross deforestation in Brazil. And so that group was led by me, being coordinated by me, as well as biomass burning, you know, big fires and so on, which we have been one of the first ones to monitor continuously on an everyday basis since many years ago. So I started to get more related to the applications of mathematics in land use. So we would be coming with the estimates of deforestation, splitting it up by state and looking. Obviously it was like several stages on this, because when we started with this, we had the first satellite images from the US. It was ERTS1, but then it became Landsat 1. And then we didn't have computers, so we would do all the work on transparent paper that we would put on the top of more than 200 images of Amazonia. And that was done until we had the computers. It was a great move forward, because then we did not lose what we have done on paper. So it was all transferred digitally. It took a couple of years to do that, but from that point on, we started to know where deforestation is occurring. We could see the trend of deforestation. So it was a huge step, and then from there to understand the drivers of deforestation, and from the drivers of deforestation to come to public policies. So because of that, I went to Brasilia. My first stop was in the Ministry of Science and Technology, and then later on in the Ministry of the Environment, when we had the Secretary on Climate Change and environmental Quality. And finally, my last step was exactly as director of the group that worked with prevention and control of deforestation in the Amazon.
BW
So this great insight comes from these satellite images. But obviously, the biosphere is quite a complex system. There's fluxes that are happening in the gasses. How much was that satellite data needing to be ground truthed by observational data?
TK
So that's an interesting question, because every country has, let's say, they define what deforestation is, right? So because of the Kyoto Protocol, most of the countries define deforestation with thresholds, a minimal area of forest, a minimum canopy cover, and a minimum height, right? But that makes it quite complex to do this with satellite imagery. So Brazil, from the very beginning, defined deforestation as a clear cut, which means that from one year to another, you see clearly what is gone. So we don't work with thresholds, and because you see that so clearly in images, you don't have to go and validate these on the ground. So it's a huge step. So we have kept this since the beginning of this long-term deforestation project, which is called ProDes — project on deforestation, let's say — and then we maintain it consistently until today, so that you do not lose the evolution of the deforestation in a consistent manner.
BW
But as I understand it, there is still a bit of a question mark about whether you can measure this visually, right? But what if the sink is flipping from being a sink to being a potential source?
TK
I think that this is something that is coming up now. Even with satellites, you had the launch of the biomass satellite, which is going to be quite useful, because what happened before is you could not really rely on satellite data, in particular to monitor biomass in tropical countries, because it used to saturate. So beyond a certain level of biomass, it would not be picked up. So we are with a lot of hope that we are going to be able to better understand the changes in biomass. Because how do we do biomass? Biomass is quite a complex matter, right? So you have to go and either you do destructive experiments, which is hard, because you have to put the, you know, the trees down. Others do some modeling, some allometric equations. So, but none of them is really perfect. I would say, because if you do destructive sampling, you are doing specific areas.
BW
Yeah, this is just to assess the carbon store. Yes, because I'm interested in those atmospheric fluxes as well, because there's obviously a flow of CO2 in and out. There's also methane. And it's a complex, but I understand Brazil has managed to maintain its observational tall towers as well, right?
TK
Yes, there were towers before we had these large scale biomass, atmosphere and biosphere experiment, which was huge, was done with the US at the time, involving a lot of experts, mainly from Sao Paulo, but some also from Amazonia. And the experiment was all conducted in Amazonia, so I participated in that experiment since 1992 so it's a long, long, long time. It still exists, but not anymore, with some support, financial support from the US. So it's now self finance, finance.
BW
And is this. This is the it's this combination of satellite plus observations. That is because there have been papers now coming out because of the changes in temperature, the precipitation, but the that we might lose the Amazon as a sink. And how worried are you about that?
TK
Now? We are absolutely worried. I am absolutely worried because we already moved from bringing a sink of carbon to being a source. So some papers do mention that. So it might be not something permanent. It might be at some months of the year when you are measuring and then you are coming up with this. And there are also experiments with aircrafts that are measured. During this but obviously these are much more expensive, much more difficult to pursue. So we cannot do that very often, right? Because it's quite costly to do those things. But now we are also doing in Amazon a very interesting experiment with Isa, you know, the European Space Agency who's putting lots of towers in Amazonia. So that we are going to, we are going to be measuring the effect of higher concentrations of CO two in the forest. So they are going to inject, you know, CO two, obviously, in areas which are controlled, to see what would be the potential impact on the forest. However, even with what we see today, you know, the droughts that we have been going through and the big biomass fires that we are having, which you know, even myself, initially thought that the forest would not be set on fire because they are quite humid, right? So that was always I grew up with that understanding that forests do not go on fire, but now we understand that that's not completely right. So we see that happening.
BW
I mean, this, this is, this is something that really caught me and kind of made me very concerned a few years ago, was when I was coming into climate in the late 90s, not long after you were doing what your work. But even then, I don't think I had on my list of things to worry about the world's forests burning in my lifetime. And it was really when the Siberian forest burnt that really I thought, oh my goodness, we've we're into some sort of event here that feels very happening, far faster than perhaps I ever imagined. And I wonder the other thing, I think, when we think about fire, I mean, we're getting perhaps better as a society, adapting and predicting a little bit. But what I think is not being talked about enough is the permanent loss of forest, because forests and fire go together, generally speaking, in large parts of the world, but the type, the ferocity of the fire, is now leading to very dead areas, like they will not burn again because they're not regenerating. So when we think about the rate of fire, and people might say, Oh, the rate of fire is not increasing, but we might we're not measuring the loss of the forest that is now a permanent I see them in California and other parts of Australia, where the fires were so ferocious that those those are not going to regenerate in any usable time period.
TK
That's the interesting thing of using satellite imagery. And then we use, for instance, for the entire Brazil. Now, we cover the entire Brazil with this monitoring of forests, right? Which makes it very nice, because people would say sometimes, well, you're not deforesting in Amazonia, but you're deforesting, you know, in another biomes, we have six biomes in Brazil. So it is nice that we do this annual evaluation, wall to wall, we don't do sampling. There are some initiatives that people say, well, we want to do sampling, but I always thought that when you do wall to wall, you have such more certainty. So your uncertainty is much smaller. There is uncertainty because there might be errors, but it's much smaller than in my view, and I shouldn't say that as a mathematician, because I think that if you do a good sampling design, you would minimize your your your errors, enhance your uncertainty. But obviously we do know what recovers, what do not recover.
BW
How concerned are you about that recovery rate, because I think that's a big variable, right?
TK
They we do have lots of lots of fire in Brazil. It is interesting to see that this year, because of some adaptation measures that Brazil is taking, we have reduced enormously. I don't know if it's going to prevail in the entire year is just January, March, January and February and March, where it has been reduced enormously. But the peak of the fires in Brazil is normally July, August, September. And so I'm really looking forward to see if the policies that Brazil is putting in place is going to potentially start to work. It's hard to talk about adaptation, right in large areas. You know, the Amazonia is 60% basically of our territory. It's huge. It's nice that cup fat is going to be there, because people are going to fly over a sea of forest, yeah, and see the difficulties, intrinsic difficulties that you have to monitor these things. So we do monitor secondary vegetation and and then, as I might have mentioned to you, we. Four back in 1989 when we had this big fire in part of Amazonia, because the trail of fire went into areas that have been previously the forest. But, you know, you still maintain the forest, but you have trails in the forest, especially when you have selective logging. And so when we visited the area, we'd say, well, this is dead, this is not going to recover, and this is ok, this is going to survive. And many years afterwards, when we came back, what we thought was dead had recovered, and what we thought would survive was dead. So that's interesting, because we don't understand the dynamics of this so diverse. You know, forest that we have in Amazonia,
ML
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BW
Here we are in Cape Town at the degrees Conference, which is a bringing together of scientists and policymakers and communicators to talk about what some people would describe as geoengineering or bit sort of man made climate interventions that are designed to cool the planet to kind of buy some time while we continue with our mitigation and adaptation efforts. But I wanted to know why you're here. What brought you here, and I can share my reason.
TK
Maybe you want to know why I started, you know, being interested in SRM, yeah,
BW
so meaning, so we're calling it Sun reflective methods now, or is it used to be known as Stratospheric Aerosol injection?
TK
Yeah, Stratospheric Aerosol injection is just one of the measures that you have under this, what I call portfolio of measures, right? So you have the marine cloud brightening, you have changes in albedo. So you do have a package, let's say each one with its own issues, right? And
BW
the aim of these interventions is to change the radiation levels so we're reflecting more sunlight back at Earth to give us a cooling Yeah,
TK
so you don't let part of the radiation to reach the ground right and be trapped here because of the greenhouse gasses, right? Everybody is scared when you say Stratospheric Aerosol injection to block part of the radiation, because they say you are interfering with nature, right? We always So, what are the implications of this interference, even if it's in small scale? And obviously this was the measure that was mostly studied, because of this analogy with large volcano eruptions, right? Because when you have large volcano eruptions, you have all these aerosols, sulfates, going up, and then we learned that, in fact, you do exactly this interference in the amount of radiation that gets to the ground, and so it can cool the atmosphere for about two years. So I think that it was from learning from the eruptions and the process that we came up with Sai. Obviously I'm here because my main background on this came from the IPCC. So from the fourth assessment report to the fifth one and to the sixth one, where I, you know, I was engaged as member, I got a lot of interest because of the uncertainties,
BW
and they were talking about uncertainties within this group of methods, not uncertainties in the climate model,
TK
uncertainties in the potential effect of these interventions, interventions on precipitation, for instance, and patterns of precipitation, and because you have regional differences, and because most of the studies and models that have been produced have been in the Global North, it caught my attention because I said, this is not fair. So if we are thinking about fairness in research, we need to stimulate the global south to engage on this modeling. Approaches, any studies, right? So I think that the Greece showed it very clearly to me. So for the Latin America, where we had only one example in this from Argentina, who was carrying out some research on SRM, now we had 11 studies, 11 projects only in Latin America, right? And what to say in Asia, in Africa. So I think that the Greece tried to overcome, yeah,
BW
so this, so this conference has a stated aim, which is to increase the involvement of a much more diverse group of countries and researchers and and that's, that's what we've been doing over the last two days, is hearing
TK
and enlarging our knowledge as well. You know what has been the advances? Because IPCC the last assessment it did for this particular issue, and that, let's say, in 2020, 2021, and there is a huge amount of literature on this issue, so keeping up with it was something that I could get from here, you know, some new presentations, and I think that the issue of governance was highly I mean, is a concern, because you can do your modeling, you can do your studies, but how about if you go to do your outdoor experiments? So how do we regulate that? Do we have principles, ethical principles, so that we are just and we don't interfere in another country or in another neighborhood or whatever? And international governance of this, which would say, do we agree already to have some deployment of this in larger scale, and I think that we are not quite there.
BW
The thing that struck me being here is that we're so far from any deployment scenarios, because what seems to have happened, who knows particularly why, but it seems like a lot of unfortunate circumstances have led to them not even being allowed to do research. So we haven't been able to do outdoor experiments, because each one that's been proposed is for different reasons, been stopped, right? So, so even before we get to a conversation about whether or not to deploy and how to deploy, the basic chemistry and the basic modeling and the engineering has been kind of thwarted, right, over the last decade. And what I mean, is that, what's, what's your assessment of, you know? What can we do about that? Because there's one thing to deploy, but there's another thing to just try and hold back. Yes, scientific research,
TK
yes. Now I think that scientific research, it's very difficult for countries not to accept that, right? Because science is everything. And I know by myself, even when I was at the institute, you know, someone from the Minister of Foreign Affairs would would call me up and say, Well, you know, we had this number here. What can you say about this or this technology? So obviously, we need to have some science behind us to say, Listen, I'm not doing that, but I'm reading a lot, so I can at least give you some grounds to take a decision of what you want. And in Brazil that was the case, right? So Brazil is pro the research, so it has been voicing that up respect a lot scientific research. But when it comes to research, I think that it's the result of our scientific assessment, our modeling, our conclusions, that will lead to a better understanding. Should we deploy this and is there a deployment in small scale, medium scale, larger scale. What is this?
BW
And I'm interested in, you know, how this shows up in the IPCC, because, I mean, perhaps we should talk about IPC. Because you stood to be, you Deputy Vice Chair. Yes, good to be chair, just narrowly beaten to it by a British scientist, Jim Skee. But what was your experience of IPC? Because it's come in quite a lot of criticism over the years. You know, it's been quite a it's been quite a bumpy road, yeah, and, and the fact that this is being introduced in the IPCC, it must stem from, perhaps just a slight worry that you know, from everything you're observing, that we are not on track to we may be decarbonizing, but the net rate of the rate may be slow, maybe late as well, yes, but the parts per million Actually, yes, it is a very good it's got a lot of information in it. That number that's not going down, is it? No,
TK
absolutely not. On the very contrary, it's going up, not only for CO two, but, you know, methane and nitrous oxide and other gasses. But you know the IPCC, it does a throat assessment of the literature, so it's not prescriptive, so it's not going to say this should be done or not be done. I think that it concentrates on if you do. Two, there are regional implications of that, some of which we have more certainty than others. And and then, and so that's the case
BW
when you were running to be just, did you not feel like this is this sort of bottom up, like summation of literature over five years that you know the work will have been done two years previous to that, before it makes it into a paper, and then five years of summarizing. Is that not all just a bit too slow and undynamic? What would you have done if you'd got that
TK
when I was a candidate, as you know, to the chairmanship of the IPCC, I think that I was very clear to every single country that I thought that IPCC was not producing timely scientific policy information to countries to develop their policies internally and also to negotiate in the global forum. And I was looking forward to have, you know, much smaller, not you know, big assessments, which are great, great, but, you know, 3000 pages, it is very difficult for you to, you know, read everything. So I was looking forward to have more compact, targeted, you know, elements that frequently as well, much more, much more, but not losing the process, in the process engaging the government to do the review of the drafts. I think that was essential for me, and that's what differentiates PCC from others, because governments have the chance to look at it, contribute to it, and then be better informed. I would say you'd have
BW
to have said that, because you needed to be elected by those countries. But now you're not. Now you're slightly one removed. You're at the WMO, which is the sort of, you know, sponsoring father of or Mother of the IPCC with a bit of distance. Can you see that we could do things slightly differently? Is there a need for a more directed or more stable process? Because the other thing about the IPCC is every five years, whole new set of people get brought in. The only stability is the countries, and they have a political agenda. So it's quite a messy process.
TK
Well, where I am now this global climate observance system GCOS, which is hosted by the WMO in the same floor that the IPCC Secretariat stays as well, so it doesn't do research on its own, but it is more concerned about the observations that are needed in particular to fit into the models, to validate some, for instance, some satellite imagery you need to validate. So you need data for that. So every four or five years, we do an assessment of gaps in data, in observations, that could improve the modeling
Speaker 1
and much more top down directive, oh, it is.
TK
It's not as complicated as the IPCC.
BW
You're there because these people with that history and that knowledge to be able to, I think, for policy. I think as I spent a brief period as a sort of semi policy maker, at least in opposition, and I feel as if I wasn't being well served in terms of understanding the gaps, understanding the risks that are still unknown, I felt like there was a process by which there was a sort of increasingly, perhaps you could almost say hysterical concern coming out the scientific community, but it was, it didn't have a lot of information that I felt should have been there. And here I'm thinking, you know, one point, we used to use parts per million as our metric of success, and then we shifted to this much harder to get your head around, 1.52 degree framing, which I think is a loss of information. It's like a less information rich number, because it's a global average, and the parts per million is way more of a certain number. And it also changes in a more dynamic way. We see annual increments being added to that, and I feel like we somehow we're losing in terms of the right metrics that communicate to policymakers how risky are, how risky is it today?
TK
I think then things go in a sequence like, for instance, there is, I almost say, direct, a direct role between the emissions, the concentrations and the temperature, right? So this is that. This is why in the IPCC, we go from one to another into another, looking at the impact of concentrations in the in the temperature, right? So I don't, I think that we need all these indicators right, all the indicators that is including how the sea level rise is rising, how well, all these indicators that we may have, that have that allow us to have a little bit more understanding and concern about the velocity of. Days on which these things are happening. So from 1970 until now, we changed completely the rate of growth in terms of the temperature because of the increased rate of growth in the CO two emissions and so on.
BW
You're right. There's this kind of information, yes, but the the emissions inventory, yeah, I mean, there's been a quite a bit of criticism to the IPCC scenarios, because, you know, not to be rude about this, but they tend to be climate scientists and modelers who are putting these numbers together. And in the real world, the the energy system is shifting quite fast, and yet, there are still scenarios out there with this huge expected coal burn, and it's very unrealistic. And so those scenarios are they're just scenarios, whereas in this middle area of concentrations, which is really the that's the measure of how much anthropogenic emissions have been emitted, plus this kind of very variable question of how much of is the natural sync helping us how much of this is being absorbed? Is IPCC doing the right job? Sometimes, I think it gets a bit outside of its the IPCC
TK
is guided by the governments, right? So we have this panel, and the panel has full authority, including in defining the chapters, you're going to have some indicative bullets that they want to see addressed the chapters you don't even change the name of the chapter. So that's the degree of the degree of how governments want to see their queries responded, right? So they don't want scientists to do their job by them on their own, because they are going to focus on what they are doing. They don't want to do that. They want to really, I want to you to provide me some answers to some questions that we have, and then scientists sit down and say, okay, there is literature for that we can address. However, we are highly dependent on not published. And this is why I also said that, you know, during my during my candidacy, that you know the IPCC reports are somehow biased, because most of the literature comes from the Global North. And then I was really pointing the fingers to the focal points that from every country that do not contribute for us to do a more thoroughly, you know, assessment of the literature in the in the country, not necessarily published. They can run and get some publications that we call gray literature, and improve in bringing some contributions from the south right now, I think that in some areas, even in the scenarios IPCC from one cycle to another, it improves a lot.
BW
Well, I suppose this is it. It's responsive to the criticisms, right? Yes, and
TK
from what is also progressing in terms of the modeling community, which we rely upon, right? So we don't do anything, but we rely on their models, right?
BW
Not one model, no many models. We're running out of time, sadly, because I think we just barely touched the surface of all the things that you've worked on, including this fascinating watching the arrival of the technologies that enable us to monitor more effectively than through your time as a negotiator, as a Brazilian negotiator, I should just before we leave, I would like to just touch on Belem. You mentioned the cop will be in Brazil? Yes, I was always when I was involved in negotiations, I was always told, watch out for the Brazilian negotiators. They are amazing. They're brilliant at what they do. So what will what can we look forward to from the cop being hosted in Brazil? Yeah, copper was
TK
to be, to have been in Brazil some years ago. You know, when Bolsonaro took the power, then he immediately canceled, and then we didn't have too much success. It was Chile, and then we have to go to Madrid, right? So it was quite a mess, yeah, which I now I think that we are on track to have the cop in Berlin. Obviously, I think that one, one thing is that I think that it's important to be in a developing country and in a region that is particular, particularly vulnerable, that area of Brazil is within Amazonia, with the indigenous peoples, with the local, you know, communities, so you have a completely different environment of where this cop is going to be. It's going to be
BW
quite challenging. Well, exactly, the location is already challenging. The location is setting that aside. Though, the Brazilian presidency, I mean, I was, I take a kind of, I'm a bit concerned that the sort of North view of Brazil. Dollars. This can be somewhat simplistic, you know, they just see you as the home of the Amazon rainforest. And actually, you know, this is a vast country. When you go there, the vastness of it is just extraordinary. And you're managing to feed, I think it's upwards of 700 million people rely on the food that's grown in Brazil. So you've got this, you know, very productive land, feeding a lot of people. And you've also got this incredible, I think it's up to 25% now of your fuel is coming from fire. Yes, right? Yes. So you're through, you're a fuel producer of, what some people would say is, you know, carbon neutral fuels. And yet, the only thing anyone ever, really, ever talks to you about is, though you've got, you know, you've got to focus on deforestation. Yes, I always feel that somewhat reductive in what you're doing as a country. Yeah, I
TK
find it a little bit unfair sometimes. But when I look to deforestation, I don't look the benefit that we are giving globally. I really look more this is the benefit of the people that live there, and the ecosystems that we have to preserve and biodiversity that we have there. So I'm less interested into the benefits that this, you know, zero deforestation is going to be bringing outside Brazil than internally, right?
BW
And presumably for your agriculture, because it's a generator of rain,
TK
yes, especially from the agro business region.
BW
But how much does the agro industry understand that link?
TK
It's more complicated, right? It's much more complicated. We are trying very hard to bring their message, especially because all the models of the IPCC, everything that I have seen, including here in a presentation from our friend from Chile, I think that if you implement Sai, and if you don't implement Sai, that agro business would be affected less if you do Sai, but that region is particularly
BW
and because it's vulnerable and it's feeding so many people, it's hard to imagine how many people are dependent they
TK
are thinking on adaptation. Obviously, you know that that they are thinking already, so crop, a crop, species and so on, that is more resilient, but it would
BW
be good if they're also thinking, let's also save the rainforest. Yeah, no,
TK
no, no, but I don't, yeah, I think that the agriculture in Amazon is less. It's more, really the cattle ranching that we have there, not so much of the crops. We have a very small period that you go first with the cattle, and then a little bit of the agriculture, and then you leave that area to recover for five years, right? So it's an interesting dynamics that we have in Amazon, but, but, you know, President Lula is really looking forward to have illegal deforestation zero if we think that illegal is 90% of the deforestation in Brazil, yeah, that is going to be quite a challenge.
BW
But what if he just makes it legal to deforest for, say, oil and gas exploration? You know that there'd be a, you know, meet the meeting of that illegal is a function of what you allow to happen. What I've been looking for in a conversation coming out of Brazil right now is what's, what's geographically and socially unique to Brazil that you could offer to the rest of the world? And it seems to be one thing is getting a balance right of where your energy sources can come from. And we've spoken about, you know, oil and gas in the Amazon. It can that be outlawed, and does that then mean you do have to allow it offshore and what there's a difficult balance there right
TK
now, obviously, if we look in terms of our energy, that is not our primary source, right? So Brazil is quite clean, and that respect and has, you know, views of enlarging in continue to be green and clean, because that has been culturally, I think, in Brazil. So the main, the main elements in Brazil, I would say it's deforestation and in the agriculture, right?
BW
Where do you think the debate on the opening up of the Delta to offshore gas?
TK
That's my that puts my brain really complicated, if you ask me, as a scientist, I'm going to say, obviously no, because we are looking for decarbonization. However, in reading some of the NDCs, some of the nationally determined contributions, I see that many countries are saying, well, we are going to spend, right? Because there is demand, we are going spend so sometimes, you know, people in Brazil think, is it fair that we have to go deforestation zero, that we have to block any, any other sources that could be bringing jobs, that could be bringing a better quality of life? The 26 million of people that live there. So it is really hard,
BW
because ultimately, one of the drivers of deforestation is this poverty, right? The people, people are prospecting into the forest to try and lift themselves out of poverty. It's a really fascinating ethical question. And I was, you know, thinking about this delta exploration, I was thinking maybe there's a thing that the UK and Brazil could sit down and talk about, because we had that offshore oil and gas period didn't last very long, and what we did with it was we pivoted into offshore wind, and we used exactly the same ships, the same engineers, the same floating engineering, to pivot. And now maybe Brazil's at a point where it can say, look, give us 20 years of oil and gas, and we will then pivot to fully clean. And perhaps that's the path through this quagmire. Transition, a transition start with a transition vision. So everyone's clear. Otherwise, you know, everyone's worry is, you build infrastructure and it gets locked in. But some of this oil and gas infrastructure is fun is can be transitioned to other sources of energy so and similarly, just to end perhaps on this, you know, the thing that I think is going to happen in this cop, perhaps because of us withdrawing, you're going to see a lot more south to South conversations happening. And I've been thinking about the rise of electrification of vehicles driven by now the South. Well, you know what used to consider the South, but China, yeah, China especially, yes, so, so in theory, China and Brazil collaborate on basically decarbonizing transport. Yes. You release all of this methanol, this ethanol, this 25% of your fuel is currently coming from biomass from sugar cane, yes. What do you then do with that sugar cane that could help displace fossil fuel demand? And maybe one thing is aviation fuel, shipping fuel, definitely. And that would be a unique contribution from Brazil, right?
TK
Yeah, we have been running some aircrafts in biofuels, and they were just novel, you know, just the other day they pilot say, Well, you don't know, but we are running, oh,
BW
actually in the play,
TK
yeah, but yeah, in so Embraer is doing a lot of investments into In doing this Amber
Speaker 1
Embraer, Embraer, which is our, it's in my city, ah, so it's the one that manufactures,
TK
the place manufacturers. So they are looking really to contribute to this, you know, to us, really decarbonizing the
BW
numbers and the amount of barrel of oil equivalent you generate today from biomass. It goes into land transport. It's very simplistic, but if you were to eradicate that because you're electrifying a transport, that amount of volume would cover all of Chinese domestic aviation emissions. Yeah, so you can almost see BYD sells you cars. You decarbonize. You know, there's a
TK
yeah, there is a this, yeah, this cooperation among other countries on that. And Brazil is not only thinking about the, you know, biofuels from sugar cane, it's also looking at the second generation of biofuels production, yeah. So it's something that is already embedded in our lives every day.
BW
And then add to that the I'm quite excited about hybrid aircraft design. So, you know, when you put batteries and propeller planes together, you can get this great combination of pretty efficient, very efficient aircraft, in theory. So you could get California and aerospace technology, Brazilian biofuels, Chinese electrification. And, you know, there's the there are these regional, bottom up transitions. I think we should really be keeping an eye on and hoping that
TK
they on energy. I think that Brazil has a nice plan 2050 however, I think that the main, the main constraint of implementation is really financial. Was meeting the other day with someone from the Ministry of Mines and Energy, and he was saying that it costs sometimes five to six times more to implement it in Brazil than in other places. So there is financing issues that I think that we could also cooperate somehow.
BW
And is that because of the cost of capital? Yes, I think so. Right. Okay, well, there you go. There's whole extra conversation about how we address that big problem. But listen, we can't cover that today. Thank you so much. Thank you. Delight to be nice. Yes, we are, as I say, very grateful to the degrees conference for allowing us to use their their in allowing us to be here, to have this conversation. Yes. I mean, we only very briefly talked about the sai all the solar interview interventions, but clearly this is something we're going to carry on following. Yeah, and I think it's partly because with you fear that the sensitivities of the climate are perhaps, if you take a risk approach to this, women. Need. We may
TK
just we need a time machine. Don't think that sai would be implemented next year or the year after. I think that it takes sometimes first because of they need to have aircrafts which are suitable to carry whatever material you're going to say so for or whatever types of aerosols, which, now people are saying that, no, but maybe that's not going to be an impediment, but I don't see anything happening in the very, very short run. But, you know, some outdoor experiments or small implementation, but not, you know, at global scale. I think that we are far from that.
BW
I think you're right. And for me, what I'm taking away from here is, as for in the policymaker community, what I would love to see is a conversation about, how are we measuring risk? How are we knowing how how weird everything's getting, how fast that is. A little bit more of a metric that is in common use and common parlance that we can get a kind of sense of how bad things are, and that will, then, I think, be on the basis of which you then would have a conversation about triggering some of these interventions. Yeah, but until we get that risk metric right, and it's got to be, I think, a bit more sophisticated than the sum of emissions versus,
TK
yeah, it's just, you know, leveling, what is the higher risk? Is it the risk of increasing temperature, or is it the risk of implementing, you know, technologies that could alleviate the higher temperature? Yeah, yeah. But I mean, you know, it's not simple, because Sai, you know, or SRM is not mitigation, right? So it is just masking the root of the problem. As I said, you know, by not tackling the emissions, SO emissions could continue to grow while you're just thinking of minimizing the impacts of this growing temperature. So how to level what is worse?
BW
And you certainly can't trade them off against Absolutely there's tendency to say, Oh, this is going to be cheaper than adaptation, which I think is a really dangerous proposition. This is a separate conversation. Do the mitigation we do the adaptation? If this were,
TK
I don't see it as an adaptation. So far, no mitigation adaptation, for me in a different context, I think so.
BW
And we've got to keep them, yes, keep them away from each other, yeah, okay. Well, listen, so lovely to meet you. Thank you so much for joining us.
TK
Thank you.
BW
So, that was Thelma Krug, experienced climate scientist and negotiator, who is now among those increasingly interested in whether, having unwittingly and increasingly recklessly changed our climate, we can now deploy our human ingenuity to cool the Earth and buy ourselves some time. This topic is complex, and there is no certainty about whether large scale cooling interventions could actually work, but it feels absolutely critical that we conduct more research. I often return to the insight that Anand Gopal shared in Episode 168: when impacts pile up, politicians are going to be under increasing pressure to do something, and the potentially rapid effect of some of these possible interventions, such as adding reflective aerosols in the upper atmosphere, mean that they may well decide to reach for this ripcord. Well before we reach this point, we need to know a lot more about the options and their implications, and perhaps most importantly, we need to have a much better process for informing us when the potential for irreversible and cascading risks has become so great that we need to act with much greater urgency. As Thelma says, at the moment, our collective actions are at homeopathic levels, so sadly, we do need to have an inclusive conversation about the full range of potential options for staving off catastrophic levels of change.
I'd like to extend my thanks to the organizers of the Degrees Conference for hosting such a well run and thought-provoking conference with such diverse attendees, to Harvard University for supporting my participation, to our local team from SA Filmworks, Adrian Anderson, Charlene Brouwer and Marcus Kruger, to Oscar Boyd, our producer, Jamie Oliver, our editor, and to the rest of the Cleaning Up team and to our wonderful Leadership Circle supporters who collectively make these episodes possible, please join us at the same time next week for another episode of Cleaning Up.
ML
Cleaning Up is brought to you by members of our Leadership Circle: Actis, Alcazar Energy, Davidson Kempner, EcoPragma Capital, EDP Portugal, Eurelectic, the Gilardini Foundation, KKR, National Grid, Octopus Energy, Quadrature Climate Foundation, SDCL and Wärtsilä. For more information on the Leadership Circle, please visit cleaningup.live, that’s cleaningup.live.