Climate Change: Can we prioritise adaptation over mitigation?

How effective are our current strategies against climate change? In this episode, Ravi Chidambaram welcomes Professor Benjamin Horton, Director of the Earth Observatory at NTU, to tackle this pressing question. They discuss vital climate change issues, debunk common myths, and explore the impact of the Paris Protocol. Professor Horton shares his insights on climate mitigation and adaptation, emphasizing the urgent need for global action. The conversation highlights the pressing realities of climate change, backed by data and years of research, urging immediate and comprehensive measures to address this global crisis.

Discussion Topics: Can we prioritise adaptation over mitigation?

• Why should we care about climate change myths? 
• What does current research say about the state of climate change? Professor Horton shares recent findings and data from his research on climate change, emphasizing the critical state of global warming and its impacts.
• How effective is the Paris Protocol in combating climate change? Discussion on the real impacts of the Paris Protocol, its achievements, and shortcomings in mitigating climate change.
• What are the common misconceptions about climate mitigation? Exploring the flaws and misunderstandings surrounding climate mitigation strategies.
• Can climate adaptation offer better solutions? Professor Horton argues the case for focusing more on climate adaptation as a feasible and urgent approach to handling climate change impacts.
• What are the economic implications of ignoring climate change? A deep dive into how climate change affects economies globally and the cost of inaction.
• How can businesses and governments effectively respond to climate change now? Practical advice and strategies for businesses and policymakers to address climate change urgently and effectively.
• What are the next steps for individuals and organizations concerned about climate change?

Transcript: Can we prioritise adaptation over mitigation?

Ravi: Welcome to Debunking ESG Myths, a podcast where we debunk, demystify, and deconstruct some key ESG preconceptions with unfiltered knowledge and data from key experts in the field. I’m Ravi Chidambaram, CEO and founder of RIMS Sustainability. We’re a Singapore based, impact driven, tech driven company that advocates making sustainability accessible and actionable to all.

My great pleasure today, to welcome Professor Benjamin Horton. Director of the Earth Observatory, at NTU, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. his main research concern, really around climate change, natural hazards. he sits on the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, IPCC, the Sixth Assessment Report, and is also a member of the World Climate Research Program’s Grand Challenge.

welcome, Ben. Good to have you today on the show.

so we’re going to cover a number of issues around climate change and obviously, you’re quite an expert in the field. So we look forward to your frank views, as we bust, some myths on the program.

basically in terms of, an agenda for our viewers today, we’re just going to get an overview from Ben on where we stand on key climate change matters, Paris protocol impacts and emphasis so far on climate mitigation as the solution to the climate issue, some of the flaws around that and misconceptions around that, and perhaps are there better ways to address climate change that’s upon us, especially through climate adaptation.

So that’s the flow. We hope that you enjoy it today. Ben, maybe I’ll just start and you can just say a few words about yourself and the work you’re doing right now at NTU.

Ben: I’m director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore. I think you could in, in business terms, talk of us as a think tank. we try to look at, the risks associated with climate change, being sea level rise, Heat, wildfires, droughts, landslides, tropical cyclones. We also look at geohazards, so looking at the 

risks associated with earthquakes and volcanoes, particularly in Southeast Asia. the most hazardous place on planet Earth, just to do with the frequency of large scale disasters. We’re quite a sizable unit. We’re about 180 staff that consists of, professors like myself, we have PhD students, and we have also postdoctoral scientists. 

we’re funded by the Singaporean government, but we work in Southeast Asia. On a personal basis, I’m a climate scientist. I’ve been doing this work for 25 years. I’m British by my nationality, so I was brought up in the UK, did my formative years at Durham University, and then I moved over to the United States and worked at the University of Pennsylvania in Rutgers before coming to Singapore some seven years ago. And Climate change is increasingly becoming, an incredibly frustrating topic for myself.

Ravi: Yes. I don’t think you’re alone in that if you read the reports, we’re nowhere on track to meet. The Paris Protocol requirements, the latest I’m seeing is around 8 degrees warming based on current climate scenarios. Clearly, as you said, climate anomalies are occurring ever more frequently and unpredictably in this region and beyond this region. What’s your assessment of where we’re at right now? 

Ben: I think that there, there’s a very small section of the population that really knows that the danger that we are posed here by climate change. Climate scientists have been stressing the issue of reducing greenhouse gases for climate change. At least the last 30 years since the 1st intergovernmental panel on climate change convened in the 19 early 1990s, and despite a variety of.

very high level reports on the implications of continuing to produce greenhouse gas emissions. Those limits have always been, past, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, when the 1st assessment report was published in the early 90s was around 350 parts per million by volume in 2023.

We’re at around 423 parts per million by volume. That’s the highest amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for at least a million years. Get your head around that it’s phenomenal. The Paris agreement. I was one of the scientists that was asked to produce data for the Paris agreement.

So I always think that, when you do these podcasts, you can have people who.I have a knowledge about climate change, but what you’re speaking to right now is someone who’s actually done the science. Okay, so when I have people who deny climate change, what they’re quite simply saying is that I’m a liar, that I fabricated my data, that I got students to come and work for me and I said to them, hey, What should we make up today?

Okay. What should we shoot the system about today? And I find that incredibly insulting. I’ve dedicated my life to this. I was asked by policymakers to find out what the tipping points were of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet. We’re talking about something that’s inconsequential. Greenland. Greenland has enough water within it to raise global sea levels by seven meters.

Okay. If it all goes. Antarctica. 65 meters. Okay, so we’re tasked in about 2013. So it was a team of European and American scientists who did observations of the ice sheets, through satellites and in situ, did modeling of the ice sheets, had a variety of models that tried to look at forcing of temperature and the atmosphere and the ocean and the ice sheet response, but also went back through geological time to try and find instances when the earth was warmer than today.

Which of course it does. The Earth goes through glacial, interglacial cycles, because the Earth varies in its orbit around the Sun. But it’s carbon dioxide that’s driving our change for the last 10 months, last 10 months, we’ve broken records on temperature every single day. So on April the 9th, 2024, for everyone who listens to this podcast, is the warmest April the 9th that has ever existed in human civilization.  April the 8th was the warmest April the 8th in civilization’s history. April the 7th. And you can go back 10 months on this.

Ravi: And we’ve just ignored advice. 

Ben: But I know people who are stopping it being solved. So it’s a really important issue. And we have just ignored scientific advice. And I struggle to understand why. Because it’s based around data. It doesn’t matter what political party, what religion you follow. Ice sheets don’t have a conscience. They obey the laws of physics.

Ravi: Yep.

Ben: They melt.

Ravi: Ben, I think that’s a very clear and compelling argument for why we need to take climate change as perhaps the biggest public policy issue of our time and deal with it. Tell me in your view, too. Despite your scientific evidence, everything you’ve produced, as a scientist, why has it been ignored in your view?

Ben: I don’t think that there is a simple answer to that. Otherwise it would have been solved. And we have the ready solutions, but we don’t do anything about it. It has to be complex why that hasn’t happened. Because if it was simple, a simple policy, simple regulation, then we would have done it. I don’t think that there is a choice we have to come together,public, private sector, governments, and businesses to address this in my opinion.

 I know a lot about climate change and I would say we’ve got about 10 years left to solve this. Just 10 years. if we don’t see an abrupt change in the makeup of our energy sector by early 2030s, then we will have passed these thresholds and we’ll be stuck at these thresholds.

And then all these systems will collapse. Conversely, if we do make the change. We become the generation that is a sustainable generation that saves planet earth. The other aspect that frustrates me is that if you listen to the, international monetary fund, mitigating against climate change makes amazing amount of sense in terms of removing abrupt and, chronic disasters,in terms of creating new technologies and new jobs.

I was listening to the BBC World Service the other day and they were talking about what’s going to unlock the next economic growth. And they’re thinking about AI, but that’s rubbish because without a stable climate, That’s the way we unlock the next economic wave is you unlock, you stabilize climate and you have to transition into green technologies. petroleum has been an amazing resource has brought many Western countries out, increase their GDP, improved life expectancy.

Amazing technological development, but it’s an archaic source of energy now, and we all know that. And businesses need to be more resilient to climate change because climate change is here. Now, the thing about it is that climate change is driven by carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. The climate outside of my window is a result of The emissions of carbon primarily by the U. S. and the Europeans since the Industrial Revolution. So it’s going to take several decades for the decisions we make now to stabilize and cool climate, okay?

So we’re living with it. in Southeast Asia, we’ve got climate extremes. We’ve got heatwaves, schools in the Philippines closing, construction workers having to be off site. That isn’t an anomaly anymore. That’s life. So we need to become far more resilient to these threats and we can, but then for businesses. You need to transform.

It’s not about being resilient, because you’ve got to transform, change your supply chains, see about how you become carbon neutral. You can’t be left behind on this. Any business operatives that listen to your podcast, if you want to be one of the companies that succeeds in the 21st century, lead on climate. Don’t be left behind.

Ravi: we would agree with that sentiment, certainly. But let me ask you this. You do a lot of work in Southeast Asia, and I talked to a lot of government officials and businesses in Southeast Asia. And as you point out, they say the emissions problem is a not invented here problem. we need to develop, we need to still rely on fossil fuels.

That’s a common refrain in this region, but are you saying. there is a path to development in Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, in a very different sustainable sort of manner. So they don’t need to sacrifice development and can still do that. But if that’s the case, it seems to me that a lot of countries are not policy ready for sure. You touched on policy, but they’re also not infrastructure ready. So how do you reconcile all those sorts of contradictory elements?

Ben: that’s why climate change, is complex. They say climate change may be the last aspect of colonialism. Climate change is a Western nation problem. it is the U. S. and Europe that have burnt through coal, oil, and gas, have produced this carbon in the atmosphere, in many cases not knowing the consequences.

in the early 1900s, it was unknown that burning your way through coal, oil, and gas, coal seams in the U. S. and the U. K. would cause such problems, but we know now. And we cannot expect that Western nations that have improved their GDP because of petroleum, you’re not going to give that opportunity to developing nations.

You can see the argument there. So there needs to be more capital available to developing nations to invest in green technologies. that is again, the only way out of this solution. So Indonesia, as an example, doesn’t need to invest 6 billion in coal fired power plants, getting cheap coal from China.

What should be happening is that the World Bank, for example, should be sponsoring projects, insurance companies should be banning insurance of coal fire and be lowering their insurance for renewable energies. So they get exportation of the technology for solar cells, for example, and input into the infrastructure to allow that to happen.

That’s the only way. Climate change has so many. positives. we hear a lot about the inequality on planet earth. We hear a lot between the developed and the developing nations. Climate change solving climate change is a world problem and it needs world solutions. So we need economic investment into the developing nations for green technology. some of my arguments is that I think, If we looked at your listeners to this podcast, what percentage of them directly benefit from the petroleum industry? One, two percent? Yeah. Why are we being held at ransom?like the petroleum companies are making huge amounts of money.

But they’re not using that money in investment in renewables or carbon capture and storage. They’re just using that money to extract more petroleum. This should not be allowed. If they’re so good, why don’t they transition? it’s part of it. How do you do this? I work in a university, so I think the key is education.

I think part of the problem for scientists such as myself is a lack of communication skills or certainly. how you can get your voice amplified enough to make a difference. So when someone calls you a liar, they care about climate change, they can quite easily do that. But to your face, it’s different.

I always think that if someone meets me, they can maybe see something genuine about myself, see the passion, see the hope. and why I want to do this personally, my family, my community, what makes me as a person, I think that helps, but I feel too often scientists have just spoken to a mirror.

I certainly did for 20 years. just speaking to other scientists, improving our science, but we didn’t reach out and we didn’t have the common language to be able to talk to policy people. That’s improved. Business communities. I still feel as though we just, as ships that pass in the night, they’re just disconnects on us, understanding the urgency of climate change, understanding that we have these alternatives, understanding that we don’t have a choice, understanding that it is now urgent.

Ravi: absolutely.

Ben: And so it can’t always be because it’s a regulation. It’s a stick. It has to be because you want to do it and you understand why you can do it. climate change solves inequality. We’re all students all the time. It’s about learning, you know, doing things differently. 

Yeah. No, absolutely.now it seems that the emphasis so far on trying to reverse the current trends is on climate mitigation. You did touch on, some elements of that energy transition, carbon capture, storage and so on. But is it fair to say that while these are worthy and laudable initiatives, and indeed, a lot more investment needs to be made, I agree with you.

Ravi: Is it a case of maybe too little too late that we simply don’t have enough time because some of these technologies are not massively available commercially yet? some of them, as you said, require a lot of money, particularly for implementation in places like Indonesia. yes, there has to be subsidies from rich countries to make that happen like cop and so on. But are we facing a race against time with climate mitigation? 

Ben: yeah, there’s a race against time. There’s going to be at some point where we’re too late. You can’t be too late.

Ravi: So you’re saying we just have to massively increase investment in mitigation, have policies geared towards that. We just need to mobilize the financial, resources, the human resources of the world right now. And if we say mitigation’s too slow, triple the investment, triple the focus. That’s the only way.

Ben: we’ve made incredible technological advances, for example, in or, renewable energies. who would have thought that the price of solar and wind. Would be less than the average price of petroleum. there are all these positive movements, but we’ve got to see it through.

And that’s what I mean. Businesses can’t be left behind on what Singapore are doing. Singapore, a country that doesn’t have any wind, has a small areas, where the hell is it going to get its solar from? But it’s got its plans to peak energy by 2030 and be net neutral, meet the Paris Agreement. 

And on climate change. I trust them and they want to be carbon neutral. It’s whatever the country’s got to be by 2050. How is Singapore going to get there?

That is not easy at all, but it’s stated that and it’s investing money in terms of trying to balance carbon. So one of the low cost solutions is carbon neutral. preserving what we already have. in 2023, we chopped down as much pristine rainforest in 2023 as we did in 2003. It’s not changed.

Why? Why when we know how important our natural resources, corals, mangroves, marshes, tropical rainforests, savannah, permafrost, when we know their importance, are they just exploited? Because we don’t pay a true value to carbon, but Singapore’s got to balance this. we’ve got to work with our Southeast Asian partners, make sure we preserve the peatlands of Kalamata, Matang mangrove in Malaysia.

They store so much carbon. Then we need to think about how can we enhance them. So instead of it always being deforestation, maybe by 2013, we get a sign change and we’ve reforested areas. Okay. So there, and that’s low cost. It’s got to value carbon, not a carbon tax of 5. We think that to start to make it more economically valuable, you have to be 30 or 40 per ton of carbon. We as a developed nation should be able to handle that. Yeah, should be able to handle that tax. So long as that tax money then goes into preserving those, 

 that’s where the future is, yeah? Development of renewables, storing our carbon, and we’ve got to do this rapidly.

 I was on the BBC News at seven o’clock this morning, okay, talking about that in the Philippines they’re having to take children out of school because it’s too hot. How is that affecting their development, their mental health, the impact on the parents? How can they work when the kids are off school?

 and that’s horrendous that we’re at this stage where in the Philippines, it’s too hot for the children to be inside. So they have to go back home. And so I don’t like being on these shows. What I want to be on a show is about success stories. I said to the, and I was on it last year on the BBC and I said to the same person, I said, I really wish you wouldn’t invite me because it’s always about something upsetting. And it’s so upsetting because we know how to answer it. And we can mobilize. We mobilized in the pandemic. We didn’t have a vaccine for COVID 19. within a year we did, okay? We already have the vaccine for climate change. It’s already out there. Just apply it. Just imagine it’d be about the pandemic that if a scientist like myself had come on your show and said, we’re going to have a pandemic.

it’s going to kill millions of people. it’s going to shut down the economy. You’re going to be either isolated at home or isolated with your family, but I’ve got vaccine here for you. In the short term, it may be inconvenient, but in five years, you’ll be making as much money as you did before. Are you going to take this?

Are you going to take the red pill? Or are you going to ignore me? What do you think we would have done? With climate change, here it is. scientists have just put this on a plate to the business community and the government. These are the implications. Here’s the solution. Act.

Ravi: So the examples you gave of successful transition, were mainly rich countries. So if you’re a leader in India or China or Indonesia with the development imperative, versus the climate change initiative, how do you balance that? These are huge places. they are the ones probably the most responsible right now for the increase in emissions.frankly, richer countries have reduced them over time. how do you manage that? 

Ben: first of all, the emissions today make a very small percentage increase to the total amount of

Ravi: Yeah, it’s historical emissions, that’s the problem. Yeah,

Ben: So historical emissions are who have to pay. it needs to be communicated like this. So developing that your China on climate change is a little bit of a success story, isn’t it?

Ravi: True. They have a world leading technologies in EV, solar, so on. Yeah, they do.

Ben: exactly. why is that? one of it is economics because they want to be ahead. Know, I see that the US are trying to respond. there’s pushback from Republicans saying, oh, we don’t want the EIV cars here. 

We don’t want that. We want US vehicles. being driven by US people. there is, climate change is a global problem, but don’t let be left behind. So China are leading the way because it’s economics, but also it was suffering. It suffers very badly from environmental disasters. Yeah, air pollution being a classic sign.

Ravi: Okay, we see common examples where, Beijing, they stopped industry, they seed rain, to try and remove the pollution from the atmosphere, but they have chronic air pollution, India as well. One of the ways of solving that is going to renewables. saying that for the path for China, India, is to embrace the renewables and transition, would you not think they will? That’s the point. There’s no true cost of carbon in these countries. there’s a development imperative. it seems to me that’s not the model they’re following, although where they could make more money from it, like in the case of China, as a business opportunity, but beyond that, it doesn’t seem that,that’s what’s happening.

Ben: I’m a climate scientist. So you, if you want to talk to me about, what’s controlling sea level rise, what’s controlling heat waves, that’s my area of expertise. I always think that it’s just, we don’t put a true value on carbon. If carbon was priced, how the scientists state, it should be about 130, 150 us dollars per ton. If that happened and that was applicable to all businesses that generate type one and type two emissions, the market would have to shift very quickly.

Ravi: We see that in Europe already where the true cost of carbon in the cap and trade schemes is close to the one 30. Number, and there has been a massive decarbonization trend in Europe. So you’re right that most economists certainly concur with that. Yeah. Can you give me an example of some successful policies or successful technologies being implemented that you wanted you said you wanted to come on a show and have some success stories? from a scientific point of view where there’s some positive news? 

Ben: obviously you have the technological developments in renewables, but I think it is the application of nature based solutions, which is really one of these elements that I think we all should be embracing. so examples of our work is trying to think about making sure the landowners don’t.for example, take a peatland and drain and burn it and turn it into a palm oil plantation. So what we work with is we work with philanthropic organizations and NGOs to then transfer this money to the landowners. And then their job is to maintain the peatlands or the riparian rainforest and indeed enhance the Okay, so they store carbon and they increase their storing carbon and then we monitor it for them.

We can use satellite based technology to monitor in real time these areas. And so you’ve then got landowners who are making money for their village. Based upon maintaining the biodiversity and the carbon storage of their peatlands, their rainforests, and their mangroves. This then can be sold as a carbon credit to offset Singapore Airlines, for example.

And it’s a win for everyone concerned, but the basics of it is science. We need to identify which areas of these natural rainforests are the best for biodiversity, which are the best for carbon storage, which are the most susceptible, which where we’re not going to invest money, which has no additionality.

they were already going to be there. You’re just giving me money. We were never going to chop them down in the first place. And then it’s also permanent. so when we’re trying to, and again, science drives this, we can identify areas where this was previously cleared and we have a great likelihood of success.

So why don’t we invest in this region, plant some trees, monitor it through the local people. it’s all about international agreements. Okay, looking at areas where we can think about, protection from storm surges. Yes, you can build billion dollar barrages. But many of it is nature based solutions, regrowing our oysters, regrowing our corals.

They, for billions of years, have protected our shorelines by reducing the energies. Why don’t we rebuild them? We’ve been doing that in areas around the UK, around areas around the US, now we’ve got a project in the Philippines where we’re rebuilding the corals and the oysters. And they have so many multi use benefits.

They stop the storm surges. Okay, they reduce the energy of that. They provide a food source, biodiversity source. What else do they do? Store carbon.

Ravi: they’re low cost, multi use benefit. When you think about adaptation, so adaptations here in Singapore, they’re going to try and protect the east coast here.

Ben: Okay, so they’ve got the Long Island. So this is now not just a concrete wall. It’s a multi use, incorporating nature, so it’s going to involve mangroves, corals, submerged aquatic vegetation, okay? It’s going to trap rainwater, because it’s being built out into the shoreline, so it’s going to trap rainwater, so it’s multi use in terms of providing water resources, which Singapore has scarcity of well. It’s going to protect against sea level rise, it’s going to improve biodiversity, it’s going to store carbon, and it’s going to be a recreational resource. They’re the future. So Long Island, although it’s there to protect from flooding, has so many benefits, it’s a huge positive.

Ravi: They’re the preempted me on that. It’s a good segue into the final piece. You clearly seem to be a fan of climate adaptation, but reading between the lines, what you’re saying is climate adaptation does not have to be expensive infrastructure the emphasis should be more nature based solutions, which,are readily available, low cost. it’s today, multi benefits.

Ben: My whole thought about whether it’s climate adaptation or climate mitigation, there are technological advances, but, also remember we live on planet earth for 4. 6 billion years. It’s been doing an experiment of what works best. we know how carbon is stored.

we know how to increase productivity. one of the sort of solutions I like to promote is enhanced rock weathering. So our agricultural soils, how we maintain the productivity, we just put fertilizer after fertilizer, and it strips the soil from its organic matrix, which stores carbon.

However, why don’t we replace that? We can use slag from coal heaps. We can use basalt from volcanic eruptions. We can put this enhanced rock weathering on our agricultural fields. It does twofold. One, it does increase productivity because it’s a natural fertilizer. Three, by tenfold increase in the amount of carbon it stores.

Ravi: I agree with you 100 percent on climate adaptation, and in fact, wrote an article about it a few years ago in the Harvard Business Review, which was quite well received even by the business community, but, the point is only 7 percent of global climate investment goes into adaptation today mysteriously, these seem like the really here and now low cost, as you say, very effective solutions, which can be deployed, but very little investment goes into it. Why do you think that is so much more goes into mitigation, and other areas?

Ben: I would say, mitigation because if you can develop the technology, you could be the next unicorn. You can make a lot of money outta it. Adaptation. Where’s the money? It’s mainly a saving, a risk-based approach.

But I have my thoughts that people. Think that climate, so we have a heat wave now in Singapore, for example, and every afternoon we seem to be hitting 33, 34, 35 degrees C. The only respite we get is when we have a torrential downpour. Then it gets incredibly humid and we go on this cycle again.

People are expecting for it to get cool again. Nah, it’s not we’re in a warming world. So we need to live with this. It’s like sea level rise what I try and say to pub here in singapore is that The magnitude of sea level rise how high and what the rates are is going to depend upon your emissions But it is going to rise.

It’s going to rise for thousands of years now because you set the wheels in motion. So you need to adapt. There’s no, there’s a question of how high you need to build a seawall when you need to build, but you need to adapt. So money does have to be put into infrastructure around all the coastlines of the world.

Now, how you do that depends upon the value of the assets and options that you have.you can relocate in many areas. You can move inland. Singapore can’t do that. You can build tidal barrages and, keep the water out. Or the lower cost solution is let the water in. have nature based solutions to slow it down.

Mangroves, oysters, coral reefs has so many other benefits. allowing water into your city is one of the main mechanisms to cool a city. We have Singapore’s classic many cent, we put the, our waterways underneath the ground. We build over it. Concrete, asphalt that absorbs heat. Open it up. This then also stops.

It’s another way, if we open it up, create vegetation around our waterways, it stops flooding. Again, climate change, when you look at the solutions. The solutions need to be multifaceted, and then you can have so many benefits. Imagine Singapore with all its, like the Klang River, opening up. We love the waterways that exist now, but having then, mangroves or vegetation along the side, parks along the side, it cools.

And that’s the knowledge. That’s the future. Yeah, and I know that because I’m a scientist.

So adaptation is going to be key in our cities. Again, one of the things about climate change is our global population is becoming more and more urban. They state that the number of people living in cities today is the same amount that lived on the whole of planet earth in 2008. So to solve climate change for the human species, anyhow, is You solve it in the cities.

So you adapt your city and we know the solutions again,simple ones, paint your roofs white. Yeah, have green infrastructure, open waterways, learn from populations that have dealt with heat before. They’ve got to be big changes because climate is here,

Ravi: Yeah.

Ben: changing.

Ravi: So Ben, we need to wrap up. As the show’s called ESG Mythbusters. So maybe you could, for me, tell me what is the biggest myth you’d like to bust in front of my audience, around climate change? what do you see as the biggest misconception myth? 

Ben: Simple. It’s not a problem for tomorrow’s generation. It’s now we have

Ravi: 10 years.

Ben: You have no choice, like no choice.

Ravi: Yeah. No, I think that’s a great message to everyone, business leaders, policy makers, 

Ben: I’ll say a caveat. I really hope I’m wrong. Like I really hope I am wrong. Every day when we do climate science, I really hope I wrote an article in the Straits Times warning about the temperatures in 2023 and 2020, I really hoped I was wrong. I wasn’t,

Ravi: Yeah,let’s hope for a change, Ben, fantastic insights, obviously, you have, amazing knowledge, we could go on and on my podcast is oriented a little bit more towards business people, policymakers, I think you’ve offered some great advice, insights, thank you very much for being on the show. Listeners, I hope you guys really enjoyed this. I think this was the one of the most interesting episodes we’ve done in Mythbusters. thanks for joining us today. and thank you, Ben.

Ben: Thank you very much. Thank you.

Our Guest: Professor Benjamin Horton

Professor Benjamin Horton is the Director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore, situated at Nanyang Technological University. He has won several research awards from the European Geosciences Union, American Geophysical Union, and the Geological Society of America and has published over 240 articles in peer-reviewed journals about climate change, natural hazards, and sea-level rise. He is also an editor for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6th Assessment Report and a Member of the World Climate Research Programme’s Grand Challenge.