Physical Attraction

Latest Episodes:

Climate 201: NETS V: Carbon Capture, Utilisation, and Storage Oct 18, 2021

Show notes

N/B: Owing to a ridiculously hectic schedule until the end of the year, episodes will continue to be released on a fortnightly basis until further notice - thanks for understanding. We hear an awful lot about carbon capture, utilisation, and storage as a technology that could help to mitigate climate change. In this episode, we review the science, the policy, existing CCS plants, and the potential for the captured carbon to be utilised. Will CCS ever materialise?

Climate 201: Negative Emissions IV: Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) Oct 04, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, we get into some of the specific technologies that might be called upon to deliver negative emissions at scale. Specifically, we're looking at the advantages, disadvantages, and concerns surrounding BECCS (Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage.)

Climate 201, Negative Emissions III: Technological Promises, or Prevarications Sep 21, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, we discuss whether the promises that some new technology - like negative emissions - will come along and "solve climate change" for us are genuine, or if they have instead shaped climate policy into prevarication and procrastination.

Climate 201: Negative Emissions (II): We'll Always Have Paris? Sep 13, 2021

Show notes

Increasing levels of negative emissions are envisioned by models in climate-change scenarios that are compatible with the Paris Agreements. In this episode, we talk about some of the geopolitical implications for trying to deliver this, and the alternative futures that we can envision. Do "thinly-veiled techno-utopias shore up the Paris Agreement?"

Climate 201: Negative Emissions I: The Last Thing We Should Be Talking About? Sep 06, 2021

Show notes

Negative emissions technologies (NETs), also called carbon dioxide removal (CDR), are seen by many as an increasingly essential part of climate change mitigation. Many of the scenarios that the IPCC suggests for meeting the Paris Agreement goals suggest that we will suck billions of tonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere by the end of the century - using technology which has barely made it past the pilot project stage. In this episode, I ask: how did we get here?

Book Club: Jason Hickel's The Divide, Part I: The Origins of Global Inequality Aug 24, 2021

Show notes

The book club returns, with a two-part review and overview of anthropologist Jason Hickel's book "The Divide", about global inequality, its historical origins, and possible solutions in the future.

Cosmology, VII: Cosmological Contradictions Aug 16, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, we discuss the ongoing battle throughout the 1930s and 1940s between those who believed in a steady-state Universe, and those who thought it was expanding - and how it took more observations to overcome these cosmological contradictions.

TT: Climate, CCS Struggles as Adaptation Stalls Aug 07, 2021

Show notes

To close out this series of news episodes, we discuss the depressing failure of carbon capture and storage projects in Australia, as well as the far-too-slow approach to climate change adaptation across the world.

Thermonuclear Takes: Amazon Carbon Stocks and Global Green Recovery Progress Update Aug 03, 2021

Show notes

In this episode of Thermonuclear Takes, we tackle a couple of recent climate-related news stories - the "tipping point" carbon flux measurements from the Amazon rainforest, and the IEA's progress report on a global green recovery.

Thermonuclear Takes: The Little Robot That Couldn't Jul 30, 2021

Show notes

Updates on the Softbank Vision Fund and the sad fate of Pepper the robot.