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[00:00:00.960 --> 00:00:07.200] A mochi moment from Mark, who writes, I just want to thank you for making GOP1s affordable.
[00:00:07.200 --> 00:00:12.160] What would have been over $1,000 a month is just $99 a month with Mochi.
[00:00:12.160 --> 00:00:14.640] Money shouldn't be a barrier to healthy weight.
[00:00:14.640 --> 00:00:17.920] Three months in, and I have smaller jeans and a bigger wallet.
[00:00:17.920 --> 00:00:19.120] You're the best.
[00:00:19.120 --> 00:00:20.240] Thanks, Mark.
[00:00:20.240 --> 00:00:23.120] I'm Myra Ameth, founder of Mochi Health.
[00:00:23.120 --> 00:00:27.040] To find your Mochi moment, visit joinmochi.com.
[00:00:27.040 --> 00:00:30.320] Mark is a mochi member compensated for his story.
[00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:44.720] It is Thursday, the 17th of July, 2025, and you're listening to Skeptics with a K, the podcast for science, reason, and critical thinking.
[00:00:44.720 --> 00:00:56.000] Skeptics with a K is produced by Skeptic Media in association with the Merseyside Skeptic Society, a non-profit organization for the promotion of scientific skepticism on Merseyside around the UK and internationally.
[00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:57.360] I'm your host, Mike Hall.
[00:00:57.360 --> 00:00:58.560] With me today is Marsh.
[00:00:58.560 --> 00:00:59.040] Hello.
[00:00:59.040 --> 00:00:59.920] And Alice.
[00:00:59.920 --> 00:01:00.720] Hello.
[00:01:00.720 --> 00:01:03.440] Oh, so it has been really warm.
[00:01:03.680 --> 00:01:04.400] It's been warm out here.
[00:01:04.640 --> 00:01:05.520] It has been so warm.
[00:01:06.400 --> 00:01:07.680] I don't know that I can cope.
[00:01:07.840 --> 00:01:08.960] It's too hot for me to cope.
[00:01:09.360 --> 00:01:11.120] I can't manage this kind of heat.
[00:01:11.120 --> 00:01:12.560] The days are all really long.
[00:01:12.560 --> 00:01:13.280] They're humid.
[00:01:13.280 --> 00:01:14.720] They're oppressively warm.
[00:01:14.720 --> 00:01:21.120] It's quite funny because I've been seeing a lot of, I've not been seeing people on social media necessarily complaining about the weather.
[00:01:21.120 --> 00:01:35.760] I've seen specifically Americans on social media complaining about the weather in the UK and acknowledging that they have previously been wrong to chastise British people for complaining about hot weather in the UK.
[00:01:35.760 --> 00:01:39.840] So I've been seeing very meta conversations about the weather in the UK.
[00:01:39.840 --> 00:01:45.360] As always happens when I'm doing a story, Alice, pin in the first thing that you say because I will certainly come to that.
[00:01:45.360 --> 00:01:47.360] It's a conversation I've had with Katie as well.
[00:01:47.520 --> 00:01:50.800] There's this thing that Americans have where they say British weather hits different.
[00:01:51.120 --> 00:01:52.320] British hot hits different.
[00:01:52.320 --> 00:01:54.160] And I've said to Katie, is that true?
[00:01:54.160 --> 00:01:54.720] Is that the case?
[00:01:54.720 --> 00:02:01.560] Because obviously, Katie lived in San Antonio where it was 90 plus Fahrenheit most of the time, but it's also very humid.
[00:02:01.560 --> 00:02:02.280] Yes, yeah, yeah.
[00:02:02.280 --> 00:02:04.360] Texas is pretty bad, just generally.
[00:01:59.520 --> 00:02:06.360] And she's going, Oh, Christ, no, Britain's so much worse.
[00:02:06.520 --> 00:02:08.200] When it's hot, it's fucking intolerable.
[00:02:08.200 --> 00:02:13.560] And she's looking at the she's feeling and thinking it must be like 100 degrees.
[00:02:13.560 --> 00:02:18.920] And she looks at the temperature, and it's like 75 Fahrenheit and goes, What the fuck?
[00:02:18.920 --> 00:02:20.280] What are you doing, Britain?
[00:02:20.280 --> 00:02:21.560] How the fuck have you pulled this off?
[00:02:21.560 --> 00:02:23.720] And it's not just during the day, like the nights have been bad.
[00:02:23.880 --> 00:02:26.120] Last night, as of recording, last night was terrible.
[00:02:26.120 --> 00:02:29.640] It's like sticky and close, and it's like throw your duvet away, kind of warm.
[00:02:29.640 --> 00:02:32.440] And I've got a massive fan on my ceiling that spins quite quick.
[00:02:33.320 --> 00:02:35.480] Just sits there and says, Marsh, you're so great.
[00:02:35.480 --> 00:02:35.800] So great.
[00:02:35.800 --> 00:02:36.280] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:02:37.480 --> 00:02:37.800] Can I look?
[00:02:37.800 --> 00:02:39.000] Can you do another podcast?
[00:02:40.680 --> 00:02:48.680] My bedroom is specifically particularly horrific because we get the sun in the late afternoon on that side of the house.
[00:02:48.680 --> 00:02:52.920] It just heats up and heats up and heats up through two massive glass windows.
[00:02:52.920 --> 00:02:54.600] Because the windows on these houses are massive.
[00:02:54.840 --> 00:02:56.440] Yeah, they're decently reasonably big.
[00:02:56.440 --> 00:03:00.360] They're not like your kind of little boxy windows that you get on new build houses.
[00:03:00.360 --> 00:03:05.640] But also, so the sun's coming in, all the heat from the rest of the house is rising into the bedroom.
[00:03:05.640 --> 00:03:09.960] And of course, asleep in a bedroom with two dogs, in a bed with two dogs.
[00:03:09.960 --> 00:03:12.840] It was horrific last night and the night before.
[00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:13.800] It's been so bad.
[00:03:14.040 --> 00:03:15.560] I've been sleeping on top of the covers.
[00:03:15.560 --> 00:03:15.880] Yeah.
[00:03:15.880 --> 00:03:19.960] I've just been slept on the bed, not in the bed in any capacity.
[00:03:19.960 --> 00:03:24.200] I went to retrieve my flat sheet yesterday because I have a flat sheet for this very purpose.
[00:03:24.600 --> 00:03:26.360] I don't know what a flat sheet is, but carry on.
[00:03:26.360 --> 00:03:27.080] Just a single sheet.
[00:03:27.320 --> 00:03:28.360] A non-fitted sheet.
[00:03:28.360 --> 00:03:28.600] Yeah.
[00:03:28.600 --> 00:03:32.840] A non-fitted sheet that you can just throw over you so that you're covered, but you're not.
[00:03:33.080 --> 00:03:34.520] No, a sheet is fine.
[00:03:34.920 --> 00:03:39.640] But it turned out our, for some reason, our flat sheet smelt weirdly of damp.
[00:03:39.640 --> 00:03:43.080] So I've had to throw that in the wash and use just an empty duvet case.
[00:03:43.080 --> 00:03:43.720] Right.
[00:03:43.720 --> 00:03:44.200] Yeah.
[00:03:44.200 --> 00:03:44.520] So.
[00:03:44.520 --> 00:03:46.000] No, I've just raw dogged it.
[00:03:44.680 --> 00:03:48.400] I've just, I'm just lying on the bed.
[00:03:48.400 --> 00:03:50.400] Well, it's kind of gone past the point of being lovely.
[00:03:44.840 --> 00:03:51.760] It's kind of actively unpleasant now.
[00:03:52.080 --> 00:03:55.280] And we're coming out of our third heat wave of the year so far.
[00:03:55.680 --> 00:03:56.560] We have had quite a few, yeah.
[00:03:56.720 --> 00:03:58.640] That's like around the last weekend.
[00:03:58.640 --> 00:04:03.280] We've had days here in Liverpool where it was like 30 degrees, something there, Celsius, in that kind of area.
[00:04:03.280 --> 00:04:04.560] And that's hot for around here.
[00:04:04.720 --> 00:04:10.640] 30 degrees, once you get to 30, when I was on a holiday in Croatia, there were days that it was 30 degrees, and that was the days that Nicola just shut down.
[00:04:10.640 --> 00:04:12.720] She cannot function in 30 degrees.
[00:04:12.720 --> 00:04:16.960] And it comes off the back of similar temperatures that we had at the start of July.
[00:04:16.960 --> 00:04:19.680] And we had another one of our three heat waves.
[00:04:19.680 --> 00:04:24.480] During that period, Kent saw temperatures hit 35.8 degrees Celsius.
[00:04:24.960 --> 00:04:31.120] Took me a minute to register that you're talking about the place and not some person called Kent who paid Britain for some reason to tell us.
[00:04:31.120 --> 00:04:32.480] Yeah, we had Kent from Kent.
[00:04:32.480 --> 00:04:42.000] And 35.8 degrees Celsius is just four and a half degrees short of the hottest temperature ever recorded in the UK, which is when Lincolnshire hit 40.3 degrees Celsius.
[00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:43.760] And that was only in 2022.
[00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:45.600] So that was also very recently.
[00:04:45.680 --> 00:04:49.920] So we've had some quite intense heat waves over the last few years in the UK.
[00:04:49.920 --> 00:04:58.880] And two weeks before the heat wave at the start of July, around about mid-June, we had the first heat wave of the year hitting 32 degrees Celsius in southeast of England in mid-June.
[00:04:58.880 --> 00:05:06.320] And it resulted in the death of an estimated 600 people in England and Wales because heat waves come with mortality because we're not built for it.
[00:05:06.320 --> 00:05:07.840] We're not ready for this.
[00:05:07.840 --> 00:05:18.040] And we're relatively lucky in the north in that this heat wave has been particularly has hit us quite hard up here but the two previous ones, it didn't get anywhere near as hot as it did in the south.
[00:05:18.040 --> 00:05:19.800] Yeah, it's far, far hotter in the south.
[00:05:19.800 --> 00:05:21.960] And we've still got months left of summer as well.
[00:05:21.960 --> 00:05:26.840] And the likelihood is we're going to face some extreme temperatures at another point over the next couple of months.
[00:05:26.840 --> 00:05:30.600] This isn't normal, or at least it wasn't normal.
[00:05:29.600 --> 00:05:32.920] It essentially is normal for us now.
[00:05:29.760 --> 00:05:44.680] There's actually a new report that was published today from the Royal Meteorological Society's International Journal of Climatology, which highlighted how normalized extreme temperatures are becoming in the UK as a result of climate change.
[00:05:44.680 --> 00:05:46.440] Today, as of recording.
[00:05:46.440 --> 00:05:48.600] Today, as of recording, Monday 14th.
[00:05:48.600 --> 00:05:49.160] Yeah.
[00:05:49.480 --> 00:06:01.480] As the Met Office press release explained, quote, the last three years have been in the UK's top five warmest on record, with 2024 the fourth warmest year in records dating back to 1884.
[00:06:01.480 --> 00:06:03.240] And so this is quite extreme.
[00:06:03.240 --> 00:06:05.560] Last year we saw the warmest May on record.
[00:06:05.560 --> 00:06:07.960] We saw the warmest spring on record.
[00:06:07.960 --> 00:06:11.720] February of last year was the second warmest February ever recorded.
[00:06:11.720 --> 00:06:14.520] Last year had a top five warmest winter.
[00:06:14.520 --> 00:06:18.120] 2025 seems set to beat at least some of those records.
[00:06:18.120 --> 00:06:20.280] Another record is going to fall this year probably.
[00:06:20.280 --> 00:06:25.720] For parts of the UK, six of the 10 warmest years on record have come in the last decade.
[00:06:25.720 --> 00:06:27.640] Six of the ten hottest ever.
[00:06:27.640 --> 00:06:30.440] And those records go back as far as 1780s.
[00:06:30.440 --> 00:06:35.480] So of the 10 hottest years since the 1780s, six of them are in the last 10 years.
[00:06:35.480 --> 00:06:39.240] But the thing is, it's not even just the high temperatures that are an issue here in the UK.
[00:06:39.240 --> 00:06:42.200] It's also the increasing extremity of the temperatures.
[00:06:42.360 --> 00:06:48.040] Because it's not that temperature has been steadily rising at the same rate evenly across the entire year.
[00:06:48.040 --> 00:06:54.520] What's happening is now we're far more likely to suffer extreme highs and then also at other points, extreme lows.
[00:06:54.520 --> 00:07:03.920] So if you take this is going to sound a little bit mathsy, a little bit stancy, but if you follow me here, if you take the average daily temperatures from 1961 to 1990 as a baseline.
[00:07:03.640 --> 00:07:05.480] So, so what's the average January the 1st?
[00:07:05.480 --> 00:07:06.760] What's the average July the 1st?
[00:07:06.760 --> 00:07:09.880] Across those 30 years, take an average, there's your baseline.
[00:07:09.880 --> 00:07:15.200] The number of days that are five Celsius above that baseline have doubled in the last decade.
[00:07:13.720 --> 00:07:19.680] The number that are 10 Celsius above that baseline have quadrupled in the last decade.
[00:07:21.120 --> 00:07:30.320] So, we are now, on average, there is more than three days per year that are 10 degrees higher than a 30-year baseline for that day of the year.
[00:07:30.320 --> 00:07:37.920] So, in the lifetime of this show, even this country has become significantly hotter and with significantly more extreme temperature days.
[00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:40.080] Makes it sound like it's our fault when you break it like that.
[00:07:40.480 --> 00:07:42.320] It does sound like it's our fault.
[00:07:42.960 --> 00:07:52.080] And then we take into account things like the extreme rainfall that we're seeing again, both as an average daily rainfall and in an increase in extreme flooding events.
[00:07:52.080 --> 00:08:04.320] So, for the decade from 2015 to 2024, the winter half-year, which is essentially October through to March, that is now 16% wetter than the baseline period 1961 to 1990.
[00:08:04.320 --> 00:08:11.360] The previous winter, October 2023 to March 2024, was the wettest period in recorded history in this country.
[00:08:11.920 --> 00:08:14.960] Those records go back to 1767, the rainfall records.
[00:08:14.960 --> 00:08:21.040] So, the record rainfall in that six-month period going back to 1767.
[00:08:21.360 --> 00:08:30.480] Since that time, since 1767, six of the 10 wettest winter half years for England and Wales have been in the 21st century.
[00:08:30.480 --> 00:08:33.680] Sorry, I'm not passing the wettest winter half years.
[00:08:33.680 --> 00:08:47.440] So, the half year from October to March, you take the average rainfall in that period, and 2023 to 24 has the highest average rainfall in UK history in that period.
[00:08:47.440 --> 00:08:52.080] So, it's just confusing calling that period of time the winter half year, but I get it.
[00:08:52.080 --> 00:08:52.640] Okay, that's fine.
[00:08:52.880 --> 00:08:56.320] And I think it is equated that way in weather terms because they'll talk about the summer half and the winter half.
[00:08:56.320 --> 00:08:59.120] So, if you talk to Nicaragua about her job, she'll bring that up quite a bit.
[00:08:59.360 --> 00:09:00.000] Yeah, no, I get that.
[00:09:00.120 --> 00:09:07.560] And I get that you have to clarify because the winter half in down under is a different time of year to us.
[00:09:07.880 --> 00:09:08.120] Exactly.
[00:09:08.120 --> 00:09:12.040] So it's termed by the Met Office and things as the winter half of the year.
[00:09:12.040 --> 00:09:19.720] And so the winter half of the year from October 2023 to March 2024 was the wettest period we've ever had in this country.
[00:09:19.720 --> 00:09:25.400] And six of the ten wettest years that we've ever had are in this century.
[00:09:25.400 --> 00:09:32.040] And as we've seen numerous times, most notably very recently in Texas, extreme weather events can be incredibly deadly.
[00:09:32.040 --> 00:09:44.920] And it's because, with them being so extreme, they're unexpected, they're sudden, and they're often unprecedented because they often hit areas that aren't prepared for them because they haven't had a significant history of such events until recently.
[00:09:44.920 --> 00:09:46.840] And now these are becoming more and more common.
[00:09:46.840 --> 00:09:57.480] And people really do struggle with identifying the symptoms of overheating because if you're not watching out for it, they're not intuitive, they're not necessarily obvious symptoms.
[00:09:57.480 --> 00:09:57.800] And they're not.
[00:09:57.880 --> 00:09:59.720] And the ones you'd be looking out here for.
[00:09:59.720 --> 00:10:00.440] Yeah, yeah.
[00:10:00.440 --> 00:10:06.120] And the ones that assign a sign of real trouble become almost confusing.
[00:10:06.120 --> 00:10:17.160] Like once you get into real extreme overheating and heat stroke, you get some really weird symptoms that you wouldn't necessarily correlate to overheating unless you were aware of what overheating looked like.
[00:10:17.160 --> 00:10:17.560] Yeah, exactly.
[00:10:17.560 --> 00:10:26.200] And then similarly, when it comes to rainfall, you'll have it where even if there is a flood predicted, people think they know what a flood is for where they live.
[00:10:26.200 --> 00:10:33.640] And then you see footage of what happened in Texas and the way that the riverbank roars very dramatically, in a very, very short space of time, like huge, massive flooding.
[00:10:33.640 --> 00:10:37.360] We're just not prepared for that because if you're not expecting that to happen, because it doesn't normally happen here.
[00:10:37.080 --> 00:10:40.200] Then, then your baseline for normality is out of whack.
[00:10:40.200 --> 00:10:41.800] And all of this should be a massive concern.
[00:10:41.800 --> 00:10:46.240] And I'm sure our listeners are very well aware of how concerned we should be about this.
[00:10:46.560 --> 00:10:57.360] Except perhaps there might be one or two listeners who might be old enough to remember the famous summer of 1976, which is the year that the UK had a heat wave that lasted 16 consecutive days in the middle of June.
[00:10:57.360 --> 00:11:00.800] It is always referred to as the long, hot summer of 1976.
[00:11:01.040 --> 00:11:02.640] That's how they like to refer to it.
[00:11:02.640 --> 00:11:06.640] And so it is longer than the heat waves that we've experienced this June, July.
[00:11:06.640 --> 00:11:11.600] I think it's longer than those three heat waves cumulatively, in fact, for a 16-day period.
[00:11:11.600 --> 00:11:26.480] But the thing about that is, if you are tempted to use the fact of that long, hot summer of 1976 to argue that the country isn't getting hotter, you might want to consider that even with those 16 days of extreme heat, June 1976 was cooler on average than June 2025.
[00:11:26.800 --> 00:11:31.600] The month we've just had was hotter than the long, hot summer of 1976.
[00:11:31.600 --> 00:11:34.480] That wasn't normal, and now it is.
[00:11:34.480 --> 00:11:39.280] Now, obviously, you've got listeners in another part of the world, and they're going to scoff at 30-degree Celsius heat.
[00:11:39.280 --> 00:11:50.720] I actually spent several recording sessions last week with No Illusions from Scathing Atheist, and he was sweltering in Georgia, USA, under a heat index of 100 Fahrenheit, which is in excess of 38 Celsius.
[00:11:50.720 --> 00:11:56.640] And it's a lot hotter than here, a lot hotter than we would ever like, well, than hitherto have been likely to get here in the US.
[00:11:56.640 --> 00:12:03.120] And I know that because he mentioned it each time he apologetically paused the recording to understandably turn on his air conditioning for a while.
[00:12:03.120 --> 00:12:05.360] Because Jesus Christ, it's 100 Fahrenheit here.
[00:12:05.360 --> 00:12:07.600] I need the air conditioning in between stories.
[00:12:07.600 --> 00:12:10.240] But air conditioning isn't a thing we do in the UK.
[00:12:10.240 --> 00:12:11.120] That's the problem.
[00:12:11.120 --> 00:12:14.640] You get it in hotels, you get it in shops, cinemas, big public spaces.
[00:12:14.640 --> 00:12:20.320] But how many people have you ever met here who have air conditioning installed in their home?
[00:12:20.320 --> 00:12:20.880] I do.
[00:12:20.880 --> 00:12:22.160] You do because you live in a block of flats.
[00:12:22.240 --> 00:12:23.040] Because I live in a block of flats.
[00:12:23.040 --> 00:12:24.560] And a fairly modern block of flats at that.
[00:12:24.560 --> 00:12:26.000] And that is unusual.
[00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:26.320] Yeah.
[00:12:26.320 --> 00:12:28.400] You know, that is very, very unusual.
[00:12:28.400 --> 00:12:29.720] My parents just got it installed.
[00:12:30.040 --> 00:12:31.240] Of course, your parents just got it installed.
[00:12:28.640 --> 00:12:33.080] Of course, your parents have it.
[00:12:28.960 --> 00:12:34.520] Of course, they just got it installed.
[00:12:29.280 --> 00:12:36.280] But they didn't have it installed and now they have it.
[00:12:36.520 --> 00:12:37.240] But it is unusual.
[00:12:37.880 --> 00:12:40.280] We can argue that it's unusual.
[00:12:40.280 --> 00:12:49.960] Whereas when I've been to Texas, you go from an air-conditioned house into an air-conditioned car, into an air-conditioned shopping center, and you're very rarely in the naked heat.
[00:12:49.960 --> 00:12:52.840] It's just you go from air-conditioned space to air-conditioned space.
[00:12:53.080 --> 00:12:57.640] The risk in hot countries is you wander around actually cold because the air conditioning.
[00:12:57.640 --> 00:13:02.440] So I go to really hot places and I have to take a little jacket for when I go into the tents because it's so freaking cold.
[00:13:02.600 --> 00:13:03.400] We're going indoors now.
[00:13:03.400 --> 00:13:04.200] Put your coat on.
[00:13:04.920 --> 00:13:13.320] But home use air conditioning in the UK is practically zero apart from fairly modern block of flats and things because it's something we've never needed really here.
[00:13:13.320 --> 00:13:14.760] But that is something that's beginning to change.
[00:13:14.760 --> 00:13:22.040] So according to industry reports, and these are industry reports, you know, taken with a pinch of salt because they are designed to persuade you to get on board with a new trend.
[00:13:22.040 --> 00:13:29.960] But according to those reports, 3% of UK homes had some form of air conditioning in 2011, and that's risen to 20% by 2022.
[00:13:29.960 --> 00:13:32.120] And they're just a homesowned, Alice's parents' own homes?
[00:13:32.200 --> 00:13:33.400] Just Alice's parents' homes.
[00:13:33.720 --> 00:13:41.320] And I wouldn't take those figures as gospel, but I do think it's true that the extreme heat that we're seeing, when it's more and more, is going to lead people to seek ways to keep cool at home.
[00:13:41.320 --> 00:13:42.600] And that's going to be air conditioning.
[00:13:42.600 --> 00:13:47.320] So in France, for example, they've had similar kind of heat waves of late, slightly higher temperatures because they're slightly further south.
[00:13:47.480 --> 00:13:49.240] We've had some really intense heat waves this year.
[00:13:49.240 --> 00:13:55.720] And in France, home aircon coverage has gone from 14% in 2016 to 25% in 2020.
[00:13:55.720 --> 00:14:00.440] And I wouldn't be surprised if the last four or five years has seen another chunk of increase there.
[00:14:00.440 --> 00:14:08.200] And here in the UK, the fact that we are situated downstream of American culture means what's normal for the US could very easily become more normal for us as well.
[00:14:08.200 --> 00:14:16.320] But the thing is, I'm not persuaded that air conditioning is the solution that we're looking for here in the UK, because those AC units don't run on fresh air.
[00:14:14.760 --> 00:14:18.880] They consume power, quite a lot of power, in fact.
[00:14:19.200 --> 00:14:27.760] So according to the US Department of Energy, because in America there is a much wider coverage of AirCon, about 12% of energy consumption in homes goes on running the AirCon.
[00:14:27.760 --> 00:14:35.840] And according to numbers in a 2019 report from the International Energy Authority, they are the IEA that don't deny the climate crisis.
[00:14:35.840 --> 00:14:38.960] We will come to the other IEA that do a little bit later.
[00:14:38.960 --> 00:14:49.040] But according to that, the International Energy Authority, if the rest of the world was going to adopt such widespread aircon usage, it would produce 2 billion tons of CO2 annually, just cooling yourself.
[00:14:49.040 --> 00:14:54.960] So as the world heats, our go-to solution to overheated houses might only exacerbate the situation.
[00:14:55.200 --> 00:15:01.200] I feel like I do have to justify my parents' air conditioning in saying that they have a lot of solar panels on the roof of the house.
[00:15:01.200 --> 00:15:05.760] Yeah, pin in that to where I'm going right now, because this is something I feel pretty strongly about.
[00:15:05.760 --> 00:15:15.760] And I've actually considered whether I should get a small AC unit installed in my house, because my office, where I spend most of the time at the back of the house, gets oppressively hot in the afternoons when the summer sun hits it.
[00:15:15.760 --> 00:15:19.520] But my rationale would be: I've got solar panels on my house.
[00:15:19.520 --> 00:15:25.840] I only want to run the AC when it's particularly hot, which is when the sun is out, which is when the electricity is free.
[00:15:25.840 --> 00:15:29.280] I'm still not persuaded that justification is enough to make it worthwhile for me.
[00:15:29.280 --> 00:15:32.560] So I haven't gone further than the kind of idle consideration of it.
[00:15:32.560 --> 00:15:40.880] But I'm a big, big believer in taking the step that we each can to conserve energy, avoid waste, tackle climate change, and take it seriously.
[00:15:40.880 --> 00:15:45.200] But obviously, that is nowhere near enough for us to just do these little things ourselves.
[00:15:45.200 --> 00:15:50.720] I've covered in the past my firm belief that electronic advertising is an unforgivable climate crime.
[00:15:50.720 --> 00:15:58.400] Companies running huge power-guzzling billboards at eye-piercing brightnesses just to serve you adverts you didn't want to see.
[00:15:58.400 --> 00:16:11.320] I remember there was a story when I covered it, and I worked out that each of the large-sized 62-square-meter screens that you get in sort of big city centers consumes annually enough energy to run 32 households.
[00:16:11.320 --> 00:16:15.400] And there's about 14,500 advertising screens across the country.
[00:16:15.400 --> 00:16:18.600] They could be powering more than 50,000 homes in total.
[00:16:18.920 --> 00:16:20.120] Such a waste of energy.
[00:16:20.120 --> 00:16:26.680] Did I tell you that when I went to speak in Utrecht a few months ago, I can't remember where this was, and it might have been Skipall Airport.
[00:16:26.680 --> 00:16:30.600] And listeners will correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm sure plenty of people have been through that airport.
[00:16:30.600 --> 00:16:42.600] But I went to the bathroom somewhere, and as I approached the mirrors to wash my hands, a video advert started playing on the screen of the mirror that was playing on a loop.
[00:16:42.600 --> 00:16:47.880] And obviously, like, you've gone into the bathroom, there's sometimes a sticker on the door to go into the bathroom.
[00:16:47.880 --> 00:16:55.880] On the back of the door, once you're in the bathroom, there were a load of adverts for like printed adverts for like supplement bio-gut supplement things.
[00:16:55.880 --> 00:17:02.840] And then, yeah, you come out and then it's playing a video on a loop with three more adverts just to go to the bathroom.
[00:17:02.840 --> 00:17:03.960] It's ridiculous.
[00:17:03.960 --> 00:17:24.120] But even if all of those screens, the ones, the 14,500 screens that could have been powering 50,000 homes, if all of them were truly using renewable energy rather than buying carbon offset credits or anything scammy like that, they're still wasting those renewable resources that could be better served powering those households or powering hospitals or anywhere else where consumption is essential.
[00:17:24.120 --> 00:17:27.960] What they're actually offsetting is where that renewable energy would go.
[00:17:27.960 --> 00:17:29.720] It would go to somewhere useful.
[00:17:29.720 --> 00:17:31.080] Instead, it's going to them.
[00:17:31.080 --> 00:17:35.720] And the somewhere useful is having to buy energy that is producing CO2.
[00:17:35.720 --> 00:17:43.480] In any sensible world where we took climate change seriously, a very easy win would be to turn off every single one of those superfluous screens of adverts.
[00:17:43.480 --> 00:17:44.360] We do not need them.
[00:17:44.360 --> 00:17:49.120] They're just wasting energy we can't afford to waste and generating CO2 we can't afford to generate.
[00:17:49.440 --> 00:18:16.640] And I think this is a big issue with the whole conversation around energy and climate stuff is we spend an awful lot of time turning people off from the conversation by essentially screaming at everybody for making any error in judgment in anything, you know, oh my god, you fly, oh my god, you, you know, all these things that we do individually that do contribute to the problem or that we could reduce our use of certain things to help the problem somewhat.
[00:18:16.640 --> 00:18:23.040] And so we start shouting, you know, it's very easy to shout at people about the plastic straws or whatever else that could be contributing to the environment.
[00:18:23.040 --> 00:18:29.360] But really it's a drop in the ocean compared to like the big companies who are pumping out a lot of stuff.
[00:18:29.360 --> 00:18:36.400] But also it's turning people off from the conversation and meaning that people are really then resistant to get involved in environment stuff.
[00:18:36.400 --> 00:18:42.560] And it's that involvement that's really important for the lobbying and for public engagement with that issue.
[00:18:42.880 --> 00:18:47.920] And we just need to be putting the blame in the right direction or putting the regulations in the right direction.
[00:18:47.920 --> 00:18:49.600] Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:18:49.600 --> 00:18:50.800] I completely agree.
[00:18:50.800 --> 00:19:00.000] But the thing is to make any of those kind of large-scale changes that would substantially limit our carbon emissions, prevent energy waste, that kind of thing, there has to be political will.
[00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:11.040] And that's always going to be hard when there are well-funded climate change denialist lobby groups like the Global Warming Policy Foundation and the Institute for Economic Affairs, the IEA that does deny the climate crisis.
[00:19:11.040 --> 00:19:14.640] And also while there are politicians who believe they know better than the science.
[00:19:14.640 --> 00:19:17.680] And unfortunately, there are more than a few in that latter group.
[00:19:17.680 --> 00:19:28.160] We actually learned just last week that Bert Bingham, who's a senior reform councillor in Nottinghamshire, he stopped a meeting about their carbon neutral policy to explain climate change is a hoax.
[00:19:28.160 --> 00:19:33.480] And he should know because he's worked in sustainability for 25 years and he knows it's complete nonsense.
[00:19:33.480 --> 00:19:36.920] Is a senior reform councillor one that's in senior school?
[00:19:38.200 --> 00:19:40.120] It is not, unfortunately.
[00:19:40.120 --> 00:19:41.320] Because all the children.
[00:19:41.400 --> 00:19:42.200] Because they're all children.
[00:19:42.200 --> 00:19:43.560] Yeah, no, he is senior in the science.
[00:19:43.960 --> 00:19:45.640] He's old enough to have worked for 25 years.
[00:19:45.880 --> 00:19:47.960] He's not 19, like half the reform councillors.
[00:19:47.960 --> 00:19:48.760] Yeah, exactly.
[00:19:48.760 --> 00:19:52.200] Bingham told the Nottinghamshire Council, these statistics are manipulated.
[00:19:52.200 --> 00:19:53.400] I've followed it over decades.
[00:19:53.400 --> 00:19:54.760] There's lots of science out there.
[00:19:54.760 --> 00:20:01.560] But at the moment, it seems to be, as in a lot of matters with COVID, if you follow the money, you find the science or the pseudoscience.
[00:20:01.560 --> 00:20:06.280] Is that an aside where he's gone, like it is with COVID?
[00:20:06.600 --> 00:20:07.880] It's weird to bring COVID up.
[00:20:08.040 --> 00:20:17.560] It is weird to bring COVID that, unless he terms carbon neutrality and COVID in the same breath of like, oh, these woke policies of vaccinating people and trying to get it.
[00:20:17.720 --> 00:20:18.600] It's DEI, isn't it?
[00:20:18.600 --> 00:20:22.600] COVID and climate, that's DEI as well, because everything's DEI now.
[00:20:22.760 --> 00:20:24.760] Everything they don't like is DEI, exactly, yeah.
[00:20:24.760 --> 00:20:41.960] But Bingham might not want to be so keen to encourage people to follow the money and find the pseudoscience, given that his party, Reform UK, by 2024, had accepted £2.3 million in donations from climate deniers and fossil fuel interest groups, which accounted for 92% of the party's donations.
[00:20:41.960 --> 00:20:44.440] You know, follow the money, find the pseudoscience.
[00:20:44.440 --> 00:20:44.920] Yeah.
[00:20:44.920 --> 00:20:56.600] And that was before the July 2024 election or the May 2025 local elections in which Reform gained five MPs and over 670 local council seats, including Burt Bingham's own seat.
[00:20:56.600 --> 00:21:02.680] It's maybe no surprise then that there's only one in three reform voters that believe in man-made climate change.
[00:21:02.680 --> 00:21:06.920] So, two in-thirds don't believe in man-made climate change for people who voted for reform.
[00:21:06.920 --> 00:21:10.280] So, very clearly, those fossil fuel interest groups got what they paid for.
[00:21:10.280 --> 00:21:12.120] They got what they were looking to try and get.
[00:21:12.120 --> 00:21:28.160] And close behind reform, as the Tories are getting used to beating, the Conservative government has abandoned their climate change targets, claiming that the aim of being net zero by 2050 is arbitrary, not based on science, and the product of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's bias.
[00:21:28.160 --> 00:21:34.160] The IPCC, they are biased, and that's why they've come up with this 2050 carbon-neutral net zero target.
[00:21:34.160 --> 00:21:35.680] So, this is all incredibly depressing.
[00:21:35.680 --> 00:21:56.720] And while Labour Z Miliband has been doing some admirable work in advocating for solutions to climate change, even going far as to tell Parliament that politicians who reject net zero policies are betraying future generations, which I completely agree with, we maybe can't rely on policy changes and mass public movements to cut carbon emissions and prevent an even greater climate disaster.
[00:21:56.720 --> 00:21:58.960] So, what could be done?
[00:21:58.960 --> 00:22:06.800] Well, a couple of episodes ago, I talked about the people who are trying to bust chemtrails by simmering vinegar as a way of fighting against geoengineering.
[00:22:07.200 --> 00:22:12.320] And to be honest, I left out part of the story because I already had quite a lot of story in there.
[00:22:12.320 --> 00:22:23.520] Because while those fears around contrails and the clouds in the sky were classic paranoia, as the old adage goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not allowed to geoengineer you.
[00:22:23.520 --> 00:22:30.080] Because in April of this year, the UK government did actually greenlight small-scale experiments into geoengineering.
[00:22:30.080 --> 00:22:48.400] The Advanced Research and Invention Agency, or ARIA, announced a £56.8 million programme to quote, explore under rigorous oversight whether any climate cooling approaches that have been proposed as potential options to delay or avert climate tipping points could ever be feasible, scalable, and safe.
[00:22:49.040 --> 00:22:53.520] So, the project has five proposed experiments, essentially, outdoors.
[00:22:53.520 --> 00:22:58.640] One of the projects will explore the efficacy of rethickening Arctic sea ice.
[00:22:58.640 --> 00:23:01.320] Okay, which makes some sense because we know that Arctic ice is melting.
[00:23:01.560 --> 00:23:18.040] We know that as ice coverage shrinks, the big white surfaces that would otherwise have been ice reflecting light and heat get replaced with dark watery surfaces that absorb it, which then speeds up the melting of the remaining ice, shrinking it further, feedback loop, raising seawater levels.
[00:23:18.040 --> 00:23:25.160] So, they're talking about what can they do to essentially stop that ice from melting or make sure you can retain the space that ice used to be.
[00:23:25.160 --> 00:23:39.400] And I'm just going to point out right now that I am 90% sure that I raised the possibility of covering the areas of the Arctic Circle that are no longer ice with a reflective surface to mimic the ice that used to be there in the pub at Skeptics in the Pub one time.
[00:23:39.400 --> 00:23:44.600] And everyone in the conversation laughed at me and said it was a ridiculous idea and that I was an idiot and it couldn't possibly work.
[00:23:44.600 --> 00:23:46.920] Well, it was when you came up with it, mate.
[00:23:46.920 --> 00:23:51.400] All I'm saying is, you guys talking out of a slice of a 58 million pound project.
[00:23:51.400 --> 00:23:58.040] I could have had a slice of 57 million if you guys had just listened to my genius ideas for solving climate change.
[00:23:58.280 --> 00:24:09.080] Do you know what happens if you go to a scientist, particularly a scientist with expertise in the area that you think you've come up with a good idea for, and tell them that you've got a good idea for that they haven't thought of?
[00:24:09.400 --> 00:24:10.360] They tell me I'm wrong.
[00:24:10.360 --> 00:24:11.800] They laugh at you and tell you you're wrong.
[00:24:12.440 --> 00:24:15.480] Even if 10 years down the line, they go on and do it themselves.
[00:24:15.480 --> 00:24:16.360] I think it's a good idea.
[00:24:16.360 --> 00:24:23.800] I'm not saying it's a perfect idea, but I think it's not a bad idea because you know what area used to be ice.
[00:24:23.800 --> 00:24:27.480] It's not like you're trying to fuck with the world in ways you're not expecting.
[00:24:27.480 --> 00:24:28.600] You know what used to be ice.
[00:24:28.680 --> 00:24:30.680] You're just trying to stop that shrinking.
[00:24:30.680 --> 00:24:32.680] You're trying to hold it where it is.
[00:24:32.720 --> 00:24:36.200] No, and I'm sure the challenge isn't with that as a concept.
[00:24:36.200 --> 00:24:38.360] The challenge is how do you actually do that?
[00:24:38.360 --> 00:24:38.760] Maybe.
[00:24:38.760 --> 00:24:40.200] Well, we'll come to that.
[00:24:40.200 --> 00:24:45.680] Another of the proposed projects studies how milligram quantities of mineral dusts age in the stratosphere.
[00:24:44.840 --> 00:24:49.120] So you take this dust up into the stratosphere and study how it ages and stuff.
[00:24:49.440 --> 00:24:54.400] But before the chemtrail conspiracy theorists get too panicked by that, those chemicals will never be released.
[00:24:54.400 --> 00:24:56.560] ARIA is not going to release those chemicals.
[00:24:56.560 --> 00:25:02.160] They're just analyzing what happens when they get into the stratosphere, and then they're bringing them back down for analysis themselves.
[00:25:02.160 --> 00:25:04.960] So they're never going to be sprayed out or anything like that.
[00:25:04.960 --> 00:25:16.000] Now, the other projects are more likely to draw the ire of the chemtrail busters because they focus on exploring the effects of seawater spray and electric charges on cloud reflectivity.
[00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:24.080] The idea being that, just like those ice shelves, the presence of clouds can reflect heat from the sun so it doesn't get absorbed by land or water, essentially.
[00:25:24.080 --> 00:25:27.520] So it hits the top of the cloud and kind of goes back up essentially.
[00:25:27.520 --> 00:25:35.440] And if you can make the existing clouds more reflective, either by changing their water composition or running an electric charge through them, you might be able to mitigate some of the warming.
[00:25:35.440 --> 00:25:42.800] Or I think it might work the other way: that the clouds are keeping the heat in, and by making them less reflective, the heat can sort of pass back ashore.
[00:25:42.800 --> 00:25:56.960] This might sound very, very risky, but ARIA do make a point of stating that, quote, these experiments will only go ahead after a period of meaningful public engagement with local communities and will all be subject to oversight by the program's independent oversight committee.
[00:25:56.960 --> 00:26:05.600] And also, that all ARIA-funded experiments will be time-bound, limited in size and scale, and their effects will dissipate within 24 hours or be fully reversible.
[00:26:05.600 --> 00:26:07.520] That is their assurances.
[00:26:07.520 --> 00:26:13.680] As you can imagine, on their website about these projects, they've got quite an extensive FAQ.
[00:26:13.680 --> 00:26:18.960] Where they make it very clear, they say that these experiments don't involve any chemicals that are harmful to humans or animals.
[00:26:18.960 --> 00:26:20.480] They're not going to affect the growing of crops.
[00:26:20.480 --> 00:26:22.160] That's a separate FAQ.
[00:26:22.160 --> 00:26:24.720] They won't change the weather or the seasons.
[00:26:24.720 --> 00:26:30.120] And they are definitely not trying to block out the sun, which is what they've been accused of, and what newspaper reports have even said.
[00:26:30.120 --> 00:26:31.800] They're trying to block out the sun.
[00:26:31.800 --> 00:26:34.040] It's not what they're trying to do.
[00:26:34.360 --> 00:26:42.120] Obviously, that long list of FAQs has done absolutely nothing to reassure anyone who was worried about geoengineering and chemtrails.
[00:26:42.120 --> 00:26:55.880] And as a result, there was a petition that was quickly started on the Parliament petition website titled, Make All Forms of Geoengineering Affecting the Environment Illegal, in which they appealed, quote, We want all forms of geoengineering to be illegal in the UK.
[00:26:55.880 --> 00:26:59.880] We do not want any use of technologies to intervene in the Earth's natural systems.
[00:26:59.880 --> 00:27:04.600] We think there is a potential for this to negatively impact humanity, flora, and fauna in the future.
[00:27:04.600 --> 00:27:08.760] It's been previously said that greenhouse gas removal is essential to meet climate targets.
[00:27:08.760 --> 00:27:14.600] We believe that this and all other forms of geoengineering should be made illegal in the UK.
[00:27:14.600 --> 00:27:22.600] Ironically enough, it's not a stretch to say that what we've done by pumping CO2 into the atmosphere for the last N hundred years is geoengineering.
[00:27:23.160 --> 00:27:24.120] It is not a stretch.
[00:27:24.120 --> 00:27:25.480] That is literally my conclusion.
[00:27:25.480 --> 00:27:25.800] Exactly.
[00:27:25.880 --> 00:27:26.200] There we go.
[00:27:26.280 --> 00:27:27.720] God damn you.
[00:27:28.680 --> 00:27:31.720] But this petition gained 160,000 signatures.
[00:27:31.720 --> 00:27:33.960] It received a response from the government because of that.
[00:27:33.960 --> 00:27:45.160] And the government made it clear that the wider consequences of solar radiation modification, SRM, which is what we're talking about here, are poorly understood with significant uncertainty around the possible risks and impacts of deployment.
[00:27:45.160 --> 00:27:50.520] And as such, the government's position is that it is not deploying SRM and has no plans in place to do so.
[00:27:50.520 --> 00:28:03.160] Now, I don't want to suggest that everyone who's taken issues with this pilot investigation by ARIA comes from the chemtrail-busting vinegar simmering community because opposition and criticism has been far, far broader and way more mainstream and expert than that.
[00:28:03.400 --> 00:28:14.400] So, talking to The Guardian, Mary Church from the Center for International Environmental Law argued that solar engineering is inherently unpredictable and risk-breaking further an already broken climate system.
[00:28:14.400 --> 00:28:23.280] Conducting small-scale experiments risks normalizing highly controversial theories and accelerating technological development, creating a slippery slope towards full-scale deployment.
[00:28:23.280 --> 00:28:32.080] Meanwhile, Professor Raymond Pierre Humbert at the University of Oxford said: solar geoengineering has enormous and troubling implications for global society.
[00:28:32.080 --> 00:28:42.160] The UK funding sets a dangerous precedent for other governments who jump on the bandwagon, and it's the height of folly to open the door to field experiments in the absence of any national or international governance.
[00:28:42.160 --> 00:28:52.320] So, while some of these theories do seem sound, the thing to bear in mind is that the climate is a hugely complicated system, or rather, collection of systems.
[00:28:52.320 --> 00:28:58.800] And so, any change to any bit of it could be wildly unpredictable as to what downstream consequences it could have.
[00:28:58.800 --> 00:29:12.320] According to the BBC, there have been some studies which have demonstrated that solar radiation modification could cause strong warming high above the tropics, changing large-scale weather patterns, warming the polar regions, and altering rainfall patterns across the world.
[00:29:12.320 --> 00:29:24.560] Those studies highlight that the brightening the cloud cover in southwest Africa off the coast of Namibia could end up causing a drought in South America, which in turn could starve the Amazon rainforest, which would be bad.
[00:29:24.560 --> 00:29:32.400] Equally, while it might be we might be able to bring down global average temperatures, that reduction again wouldn't necessarily happen evenly.
[00:29:32.400 --> 00:29:36.240] So, it could result in extreme climate issues in specific areas of the world.
[00:29:36.240 --> 00:29:39.920] It's really complicated, and we simply have no idea what would happen.
[00:29:40.240 --> 00:29:48.280] There are other criticisms as well, notably that spending our time chasing geoengineering solutions could be a huge distraction from the things we know will actually work.
[00:29:48.280 --> 00:29:53.600] Decarbonization, carbon neutrality, reducing emissions, moving on to renewable energy.
[00:29:53.600 --> 00:30:03.880] By introducing a technological Hail Mary, we could essentially be sending the message that it's fine, carry on as you are, because the Boffins are going to come along any minute now and solve it with a magical solution.
[00:30:04.360 --> 00:30:20.840] And it's that that's really tricky, especially when it comes to, I mean, obviously, individual public behavior is one thing, but like when there's money involved and the big companies are like, oh, okay, but it doesn't matter because we can destroy the world now because they're going to fix it, they're going to cure it.
[00:30:20.840 --> 00:30:21.480] Exactly.
[00:30:21.480 --> 00:30:29.160] And then when that technology fails or it doesn't work as well as we expect, it's way too late to take the mitigation action that we actually need.
[00:30:29.480 --> 00:30:36.360] There's a reason that some of the heaviest investors in these technology are from big tech companies and fintech industries.
[00:30:36.360 --> 00:30:45.000] And they've pushed a lot of money, their money into this area, essentially because it means they don't have to tackle their own really significant contributions to the climate crisis.
[00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:55.880] Like, you don't need to turn those big advertising screens off and stop them beaming commercial messaging into unsuspecting eyes if you've got the magical machine that zaps out special clouds to keep the heat under control.
[00:30:55.880 --> 00:31:06.440] Or more cynically, you don't need to turn those screens off or deal with your data centers and your mass wastage if you can tick the green credentials box by saying you're investing in a solution.
[00:31:06.440 --> 00:31:11.960] As long as the cost of funding the research is less than the cost of tidying up your carbon mess, you're in profit there.
[00:31:12.280 --> 00:31:13.800] I think that's what's happening.
[00:31:13.800 --> 00:31:16.680] And for what it's worth, ARIA does actually acknowledge this criticism.
[00:31:16.680 --> 00:31:19.000] From their site, they say, this is quite a long quote.
[00:31:19.000 --> 00:31:25.480] There is no substitute for decarbonization, which is the only sustainable way to lower the chances of such climate tipping points and their effects from occurring.
[00:31:25.480 --> 00:31:30.760] Our current warming trajectory already makes a number of tipping points distinctly possible over the next century.
[00:31:30.760 --> 00:31:35.400] If faced with a climate tipping point, our understanding of the options available remains limited.
[00:31:35.400 --> 00:31:44.520] This knowledge gap has driven increased interest in whether there are approaches known as climate interventions that could actively reduce temperatures globally or regionally over shorter time scales.
[00:31:44.560 --> 00:31:52.800] Yet, in the absence of robust data, we currently have little understanding of whether such interventions are scientifically feasible and what their full range of impacts might be.
[00:31:52.800 --> 00:31:57.760] This program aims to gather such data so that we can better understand these approaches and their potential effects.
[00:31:57.760 --> 00:31:59.360] That's the end of the quote there.
[00:31:59.360 --> 00:32:07.120] So, like, we could point out that ARIA are just running small-scale trials that are time-bound, heavily regulated, going to dissipate within 24 hours.
[00:32:07.120 --> 00:32:09.920] No plan to actually deploy them at all.
[00:32:09.920 --> 00:32:23.600] But if they come back with promising results, what's to stop billionaire narcissistic tech idiots like Elon Musk from spinning up the scheme at scale, safe in the knowledge that he's basically beyond the regulatory powers of any country in the world at this point.
[00:32:23.600 --> 00:32:25.040] He's too big to fail.
[00:32:25.040 --> 00:32:27.280] It's a massive, massive risk.
[00:32:27.280 --> 00:32:30.560] And ultimately, I don't know how I feel about all of this.
[00:32:30.560 --> 00:32:35.360] So, what I know for certain is that we absolutely cannot and should not rely on these kind of tech solutions.
[00:32:35.360 --> 00:32:45.600] Not solar radiation modification, not carbon capture and storage, not even mass tree planting schemes, because those often end up generating more carbon than they save.
[00:32:45.600 --> 00:32:53.520] Because we had an article on the skeptic about it: while it seems like trees eat carbon, great, they only become a carbon sink once they're past a certain age.
[00:32:53.520 --> 00:33:02.240] And if they don't get past a certain age because you've planted them in the wrong place, you haven't tended to them, all you've done is bury something that's going to emit carbon when it decays.
[00:33:02.240 --> 00:33:06.880] And also, you have to get these sapling trees to the place and you drive them there emitting carbon.
[00:33:06.880 --> 00:33:12.400] So, you can spend a lot of carbon putting in trees that never mature to the point where they become a carbon sink.
[00:33:12.400 --> 00:33:19.920] And you've ticked the box of we've done an amazing carbon thing, we're carbon neutral, we're doing an amazing tree planting scheme, and what you've actually done is made everything worse.
[00:33:19.920 --> 00:33:23.200] So, these solutions aren't going to be the perfect solution here.
[00:33:23.200 --> 00:33:29.760] Our solution has to be reduce emissions and push for policies that promote carbon neutrality and promote renewables.
[00:33:29.880 --> 00:33:41.000] The idea of seeding the atmosphere with large amounts of chemicals that shouldn't be there, that are going to change the global temperatures and weather systems in ways that we can't predict or control, is obviously folly.
[00:33:41.000 --> 00:33:48.040] But as you say, Mike, that is precisely what we are doing and we have been doing for over a century with out-of-control carbon emissions.
[00:33:48.040 --> 00:33:48.280] Yes.
[00:33:48.280 --> 00:33:55.800] We're throwing carbon into the sky with no idea when we started, no idea what kind of effect it would have, and no plan to save it.
[00:33:55.800 --> 00:33:58.680] Climate change is the result of geoengineering.
[00:33:58.680 --> 00:34:06.520] But rather than a small-scale trial, it was a massive experiment we've ran with no controls, no oversight, and no plan to arrest it.
[00:34:06.520 --> 00:34:11.000] Those tipping points that Arya talked about and that everyone else has talked about, they're coming.
[00:34:11.000 --> 00:34:13.320] The extreme temperatures we're seeing are evidence of that.
[00:34:13.320 --> 00:34:15.880] The extreme floods in Texas are evidence of that.
[00:34:15.880 --> 00:34:17.560] They may already be here.
[00:34:17.560 --> 00:34:18.840] We can't afford to be complacent.
[00:34:18.840 --> 00:34:33.480] We can't afford to let the likes of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the Institute for Economic Affairs, and the other wealthy fossil fuel interest groups, nor the politicians they've bought and paid for, dissuade us from taking the kind of radical action we need to avert this crisis.
[00:34:33.480 --> 00:34:43.160] And if we don't, unfortunately, there may come a time where the potential benefits of those risky geoengineering experiments are far safer than continuing inaction.
[00:34:43.160 --> 00:34:46.120] And let's just hope we never get to that point.
[00:34:49.640 --> 00:34:51.240] So, I was in the flat the other day.
[00:34:51.240 --> 00:34:54.600] Okay, in my beautifully air-conditioned flat.
[00:34:54.760 --> 00:34:55.400] Part of the problem.
[00:34:55.640 --> 00:35:02.280] It did occur to me, actually, lying in the flat the other day, where it's so hot because we've been burning stuff into the sky.
[00:35:02.280 --> 00:35:08.120] And my solution to that is to burn more stuff into the sky to cool myself down because of how much stuff we burned into the sky.
[00:35:08.120 --> 00:35:11.160] It did literally occur to me as I lay there panting.
[00:35:11.160 --> 00:35:19.040] Get solar panels on your other house, and then your excess energy, you'll export to the grid, and it will cover the energy you're spending on your aircon at your flat.
[00:35:19.360 --> 00:35:24.000] But I was at the flat the other day, and there was a knock on the door, and that's unusual because it's a flat.
[00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:25.760] Yeah, yeah, you have a buzzer, you've got a bell.
[00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:34.720] Normally, you get a buzzer and a bell, but this was somebody actually knocking on somebody who has come into the building on all the flights of stairs to get to your knock on the door.
[00:35:34.720 --> 00:35:36.160] And we've got a doorbell outside.
[00:35:36.160 --> 00:35:42.000] There's a little ding-dong kind of push-button doorbell, which is weird because it looks like a light switch, but it's a doorbell.
[00:35:42.000 --> 00:35:42.640] Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:35:42.960 --> 00:35:44.080] And they rang that.
[00:35:44.080 --> 00:35:46.880] And so Katie had just got out of the shower.
[00:35:46.880 --> 00:35:49.200] And so she said, You have to get the door.
[00:35:49.200 --> 00:35:50.560] And I was like, Well, why the fuck do I have to?
[00:35:50.640 --> 00:35:51.840] She goes, Because I'm fucking naked.
[00:35:51.840 --> 00:35:52.640] I just got out of the shower.
[00:35:52.880 --> 00:35:53.760] That's very obvious.
[00:35:53.760 --> 00:35:55.520] But I don't like people.
[00:35:55.520 --> 00:35:58.400] So it's, you know, swings and roundabouts, innit?
[00:35:58.560 --> 00:36:01.200] Katie may not like strangers seeing her naked.
[00:36:01.600 --> 00:36:02.320] Which is reasonable.
[00:36:02.320 --> 00:36:02.880] It's reasonable.
[00:36:02.880 --> 00:36:03.760] So I thought, oh, fuck it.
[00:36:03.760 --> 00:36:04.240] I need to get up.
[00:36:04.320 --> 00:36:05.360] So I stood up.
[00:36:05.360 --> 00:36:11.040] And then the polite ding-dong on the door became thud, thud, thud, very hard on the door.
[00:36:11.200 --> 00:36:11.920] Police red.
[00:36:11.920 --> 00:36:13.440] And I thought, fucking hell, what's going on?
[00:36:13.440 --> 00:36:14.480] They've come for your aircon.
[00:36:14.720 --> 00:36:18.800] So I'm wandering down the stairs going, all right, keep fucking out of a fucking bastard.
[00:36:19.280 --> 00:36:21.600] When you're looking, I'm answering the fucking door at all.
[00:36:21.600 --> 00:36:22.480] Open the door.
[00:36:22.480 --> 00:36:24.160] It was the police.
[00:36:24.160 --> 00:36:25.920] Two police officers stood there.
[00:36:25.920 --> 00:36:30.000] And I thought, all right, they said this, you know, they've come for me with that time.
[00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:31.040] I killed a man.
[00:36:31.360 --> 00:36:34.320] I may as well slap the cuffs on now and take me away.
[00:36:34.320 --> 00:36:38.720] Two police officers there, and they said, Do you know anyone who lives in these flats?
[00:36:38.720 --> 00:36:41.680] And enumerated like four flats on my landing.
[00:36:41.680 --> 00:36:44.560] And I was like, I mean, I don't.
[00:36:45.120 --> 00:36:46.240] My wife might.
[00:36:46.240 --> 00:36:46.880] She talks to people.
[00:36:47.120 --> 00:36:47.680] She talks to people.
[00:36:47.920 --> 00:36:48.880] I fucking don't.
[00:36:48.880 --> 00:36:50.480] And they said, is your wife in?
[00:36:50.480 --> 00:36:51.920] And I said, yeah, I'll go.
[00:36:51.920 --> 00:36:53.280] Do you want to come in for a second?
[00:36:53.280 --> 00:36:57.360] So the police came in, and I went upstairs and said to Katie, she said, Who's here?
[00:36:57.360 --> 00:36:59.120] And I said, it's the NACS.
[00:36:59.120 --> 00:37:00.040] It's the Fuzz.
[00:37:00.360 --> 00:37:01.240] The pigs are here.
[00:37:01.560 --> 00:37:02.840] Can you smell bacon?
[00:37:02.840 --> 00:37:04.360] Because I can smell bacon.
[00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:06.360] It is, you know, the Rosas are here.
[00:37:06.680 --> 00:37:07.800] It's the Popo.
[00:37:07.800 --> 00:37:09.000] It's the filth.
[00:37:09.000 --> 00:37:09.560] It's the.
[00:37:09.880 --> 00:37:11.000] I didn't say any of that.
[00:37:11.000 --> 00:37:13.640] I thought all of those things and I said, it's the police.
[00:37:13.640 --> 00:37:14.680] I would like a word.
[00:37:14.680 --> 00:37:17.080] And she misinterpreted that as they want a specific word with her.
[00:37:17.080 --> 00:37:19.960] And it's just like, no, you speak to other people and I don't.
[00:37:20.440 --> 00:37:24.440] And so she quickly got dressed and went downstairs to speak to the police.
[00:37:24.440 --> 00:37:26.600] And they said, Do you speak to any of these flats?
[00:37:26.600 --> 00:37:32.920] She said, No, we speak to people in like the flats down that side of the corridor, but not really down that side of the corridor.
[00:37:32.920 --> 00:37:37.400] And they said, Have you ever heard anyone say that they have a firearm?
[00:37:37.400 --> 00:37:42.360] Could even just be a BB gun, just but any kind of firearm was said, no, not heard anything along those lines.
[00:37:42.360 --> 00:38:01.320] And then they said, Someone at the hotel across from the flat took this picture, and it was someone who'd put a rifle on the windowsill of like a big, long, like kind of hunting-style rifle on the windowsill in one of the flats that goes along the front of the building.
[00:38:01.320 --> 00:38:05.720] And so we looked at that and said, Fucking hell, no, no, we're not seeing anything like that.
[00:38:05.720 --> 00:38:09.640] And they said they've taken a photograph of this and they've reported it to us, and we just need to try and find out.
[00:38:09.720 --> 00:38:11.880] We've knocked on those flats, and there's no answer there.
[00:38:11.880 --> 00:38:15.560] We don't know specifically which one it was because all we have is the photograph.
[00:38:15.880 --> 00:38:17.960] And so we're like, fucking hell, what can we do?
[00:38:17.960 --> 00:38:24.840] And then I suddenly thought I had just got the Merseyside Skeptic's flag out for the picnic.
[00:38:25.080 --> 00:38:26.200] I'd just dug that out.
[00:38:26.520 --> 00:38:30.520] And that comes in a long, kind of rifle-length canvas case.
[00:38:30.520 --> 00:38:31.160] Right.
[00:38:31.160 --> 00:38:33.400] And was propped up against the wall.
[00:38:33.400 --> 00:38:35.240] But it wouldn't look like a rifle, would it?
[00:38:35.240 --> 00:38:40.280] It does in its case, especially if you hold it in a rifly way.
[00:38:41.240 --> 00:38:42.440] But that's not what it was.
[00:38:42.440 --> 00:38:42.840] Oh, okay.
[00:38:42.840 --> 00:38:43.000] Okay.
[00:38:43.400 --> 00:38:44.200] It wasn't that.
[00:38:44.200 --> 00:38:44.440] Right.
[00:38:44.520 --> 00:38:46.960] But it just looked really, really bad.
[00:38:46.960 --> 00:38:49.520] But the police are standing there, and I've got this rifle shape.
[00:38:44.840 --> 00:38:50.480] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:38:50.560 --> 00:38:53.280] I thought you were saying for a second that the hotel had mistaken the flag.
[00:38:53.840 --> 00:38:56.000] There's no way they would have like, oh, there's a case there.
[00:38:56.000 --> 00:38:56.640] It must be a rifle.
[00:38:56.800 --> 00:38:57.440] It must be a rifle.
[00:38:58.160 --> 00:38:59.520] It was legitimately a rifle.
[00:38:59.520 --> 00:39:01.920] So I'm thinking, shit, what if the police see?
[00:39:02.080 --> 00:39:05.680] And then I had visions of them saying, you get down on the floor now.
[00:39:05.680 --> 00:39:06.320] And they're pointing at.
[00:39:06.400 --> 00:39:07.280] They didn't have guns.
[00:39:07.280 --> 00:39:12.480] But in my weird fantasy, they've pointed guns at me and now I'm on the floor in handcuffs.
[00:39:12.720 --> 00:39:17.600] And at that point in your brain, did you think, oh, by the way, if you're thinking it's that, that's just a flag.
[00:39:17.680 --> 00:39:18.480] That's just a flag.
[00:39:18.480 --> 00:39:19.360] I can't show you if you need it.
[00:39:19.440 --> 00:39:20.400] It's not a rifle.
[00:39:20.400 --> 00:39:25.120] But then they wouldn't let me show them that it's a flag because they'd say, he's going for the gun.
[00:39:25.120 --> 00:39:26.400] And then I'd get shot.
[00:39:26.400 --> 00:39:27.680] You could ask them to go and have a look.
[00:39:27.680 --> 00:39:29.520] If you worry about that, you can go and have a look.
[00:39:29.520 --> 00:39:31.840] And then his mate would be like, he's going for the gun.
[00:39:31.840 --> 00:39:33.360] And they'd just be shooting at each other.
[00:39:33.360 --> 00:39:35.760] And it would be booby-trapped, clearly.
[00:39:36.080 --> 00:39:41.760] And we ended up, we took them out onto the balcony to see if we could see the flat, but we couldn't because it was around the corner.
[00:39:41.760 --> 00:39:44.320] And we ended up putting them and said, go and talk to the caretaker.
[00:39:44.320 --> 00:39:45.600] It's nothing to do with us.
[00:39:45.600 --> 00:39:46.640] And we helped the police out.
[00:39:46.640 --> 00:39:48.160] But yeah, it's a fucking gun.
[00:39:48.560 --> 00:39:50.240] Somewhere in my flat, there's a gun.
[00:39:50.240 --> 00:39:52.960] It wasn't mine, but I nearly got shot in my head.
[00:39:52.960 --> 00:39:57.040] I nearly got shot for holding a flag and having a gun.
[00:39:57.440 --> 00:39:58.880] It was a weird afternoon.
[00:39:58.880 --> 00:40:00.800] And there's no information on that.
[00:40:00.960 --> 00:40:02.080] We've not heard from it since.
[00:40:02.080 --> 00:40:02.560] We don't know.
[00:40:02.560 --> 00:40:03.600] Was it a BB gun?
[00:40:03.600 --> 00:40:04.400] Was it a rifle?
[00:40:04.400 --> 00:40:05.680] Was it a drug dealer?
[00:40:05.680 --> 00:40:08.800] Sometimes the corridor smells of weed, but I think that's the case in every flat.
[00:40:08.960 --> 00:40:09.440] It's not every flat.
[00:40:09.760 --> 00:40:12.640] Just anywhere in Liverpool, on any given day.
[00:40:13.680 --> 00:40:15.760] You can smell weed at some point.
[00:40:16.400 --> 00:40:19.360] But yeah, so you know, avoid my flat.
[00:40:19.360 --> 00:40:20.960] There's definitely firearms.
[00:40:21.280 --> 00:40:24.160] Firearms involved somewhere or possibly a flag.
[00:40:24.480 --> 00:40:28.880] Arguably, the best place to be is your flat because he's going to be shooting out from there.
[00:40:28.880 --> 00:40:29.560] That's true.
[00:40:29.360 --> 00:40:32.520] Yeah, it's going to be past your flat.
[00:40:29.520 --> 00:40:33.240] Yeah, yeah.
[00:40:37.640 --> 00:40:39.960] So tickets for QED have sold out.
[00:40:39.960 --> 00:40:42.040] They have fully sold out.
[00:40:42.040 --> 00:40:47.480] We have sold the last ticket for the last QED, which when that happened, I actually had a little cry about.
[00:40:47.480 --> 00:40:48.040] Did you?
[00:40:48.040 --> 00:40:53.000] I didn't expect to, but it just suddenly dawned on me that's the last ticket for the last QED, and I had a little blub about it.
[00:40:53.160 --> 00:40:54.280] The last in-person ticket.
[00:40:54.280 --> 00:40:57.080] We are selling streaming tickets here.
[00:40:57.240 --> 00:40:58.680] So there's streaming tickets available.
[00:40:58.680 --> 00:41:00.520] There are as many streaming tickets as you would like.
[00:41:00.520 --> 00:41:01.240] Buy a couple.
[00:41:01.240 --> 00:41:01.720] Buy a couple.
[00:41:01.960 --> 00:41:02.520] Why not?
[00:41:02.680 --> 00:41:03.560] We know of someone who has.
[00:41:03.560 --> 00:41:09.720] We know someone who's having a watch party slash sleepover and they're having people around and they've each bought a ticket because they want us bought us.
[00:41:09.720 --> 00:41:12.040] So they're not doing the thing of like, oh, come around and all watch my stream.
[00:41:12.280 --> 00:41:13.560] They've all bought streaming tickets.
[00:41:13.560 --> 00:41:14.120] That's good.
[00:41:14.120 --> 00:41:14.920] So they say.
[00:41:14.920 --> 00:41:15.480] No, they have.
[00:41:16.680 --> 00:41:17.640] I believe them.
[00:41:17.960 --> 00:41:19.800] So two points to make on that.
[00:41:19.800 --> 00:41:21.560] One is there is a waiting list.
[00:41:21.560 --> 00:41:27.080] So if some people return their tickets, we will go to the waiting list and give on a first come, first served basis.
[00:41:27.080 --> 00:41:30.920] So if you want to join the waiting list, tickets at qdcon.org is the way to get onto the waiting list.
[00:41:31.000 --> 00:41:38.520] And if the hotel randomly tell us that they've renovated and have found an extra massive space in their hotel, we might be able to sell some more tickets.
[00:41:38.520 --> 00:41:40.920] But other than that, we are limited by the size of the hotel.
[00:41:40.920 --> 00:41:45.080] So yes, tickets at qdcon.org if you want to join the waiting list to find out if there is tickets.
[00:41:45.080 --> 00:41:47.000] There's quite a few people on that waiting list already.
[00:41:47.000 --> 00:41:50.600] So get on there while you can because it will be in first come, first served order.
[00:41:50.600 --> 00:41:57.800] And if you don't want to join the waiting list or you're not in a position to be able to come to QBD in person, you can buy an online ticket.
[00:41:57.800 --> 00:42:02.360] They are £49 and they are available from the QD website, which is QDCon.org.
[00:42:02.360 --> 00:42:05.960] The only place you can get QEDCon tickets is at the QED website.
[00:42:06.360 --> 00:42:11.160] Not from those people who'd like send a tweet as soon as you say anything is sold out anywhere on Twitter.
[00:42:11.160 --> 00:42:11.800] Yeah, exactly.
[00:42:11.960 --> 00:42:15.680] But they won't be able to resell you theirs for a marked up price.
[00:42:14.840 --> 00:42:21.360] And the online streaming tickets, they will get you the main stage, they will get you the podcast room, every live podcast that you'll be able to see there.
[00:42:21.760 --> 00:42:22.800] And they'll also get you the panel.
[00:42:22.880 --> 00:42:23.840] And the panel room as well.
[00:42:23.840 --> 00:42:24.400] Yeah.
[00:42:24.400 --> 00:42:26.960] We've also announced some new guests for QED.
[00:42:26.960 --> 00:42:28.400] Should we do Matthew Sweet first?
[00:42:28.400 --> 00:42:32.720] So Matthew Sweet is a writer and a broadcaster.
[00:42:32.720 --> 00:42:34.560] I've been on his BBC radio show.
[00:42:34.560 --> 00:42:42.480] He's got a show called Free Thinking, which is a really interesting show where he gets on science communicators and people with all sorts of interesting backgrounds and brings them together around a fairly loose theme.
[00:42:42.480 --> 00:42:44.640] And it's a really fun kind of show.
[00:42:44.640 --> 00:42:47.520] But he also has spent a lot of time-I mean, he's done lots and lots of things.
[00:42:47.520 --> 00:42:49.600] He's written a series with Mark Gatis.
[00:42:49.600 --> 00:42:52.800] Yeah, that looks pretty good.
[00:42:52.800 --> 00:43:02.720] He's also spends a lot of time watching the kind of conspiracy theory events that we watch, and he watches things on GB News and points out what that's doing in broadcasting.
[00:43:02.720 --> 00:43:07.520] So he's got the kinds of interests in the conspiracy areas that we're talking about.
[00:43:07.520 --> 00:43:18.240] And I think his background as a kind of historian, as a broadcaster, someone who's in the media, I think will have a really interesting perspective on that side of the weird world of Wu.
[00:43:18.560 --> 00:43:27.440] He also very famously called out Naomi Wolf for her book where she claimed that gay men in Victorian England were being executed left, right, and centre.
[00:43:27.440 --> 00:43:32.240] Yes, it was on his show that he brought up that you just misread the source material.
[00:43:32.640 --> 00:43:36.000] Yeah, so he's kind of right in the sweet spot for us, basically.
[00:43:36.000 --> 00:43:40.800] And he is a regular contributor to the Doctor Who Blu-ray collection, which I'm very happy about.
[00:43:41.040 --> 00:43:42.960] He interviews people on that all the time.
[00:43:42.960 --> 00:43:44.320] So I'm excited for that.
[00:43:44.320 --> 00:43:46.560] He writes Doctor Who as well, which is which is great.
[00:43:46.560 --> 00:43:47.760] He writes Doctor Who for Big Finish.
[00:43:47.760 --> 00:43:49.360] Big Doctor Who found Matthew Sweet.
[00:43:49.360 --> 00:43:51.840] That was my secret plan in getting us to invite him.
[00:43:52.160 --> 00:43:57.080] I did wonder why every now and then you were just like, oh, should we invite him to invite Matthew Sweet?
[00:43:57.280 --> 00:43:59.200] I was also very excited about Matthew Shoefoo.
[00:43:59.680 --> 00:44:07.000] You recommended him and put him on the list and stuff, but then every it was Mike that kept bringing him back occasionally subtly.
[00:44:07.160 --> 00:44:13.240] And I was like, Well, I know Marsh recommends him as a speaker, but Mike's the one who just keeps randomly bringing up Marsh's recommendation.
[00:44:13.240 --> 00:44:19.480] Yeah, Matthew Sweet did an interview with Michael Grade for the Doctor Who Blu-ray collection.
[00:44:19.480 --> 00:44:19.720] Okay.
[00:44:19.720 --> 00:44:23.080] And Michael Grade was the guy who in the mid-80s cancelled Doctor Who.
[00:44:23.080 --> 00:44:26.920] Ah, and that resulted in a big backlash and a Save Doctor Who campaign.
[00:44:26.920 --> 00:44:32.360] And eventually the BBC relented and brought the show back, and it limped on for another three or four years.
[00:44:32.360 --> 00:44:37.160] But during that interview, Michael Grade is absolutely convinced that he cancelled Doctor Who.
[00:44:37.160 --> 00:44:40.360] And Matthew Sweet is going, You didn't.
[00:44:40.360 --> 00:44:42.040] It carried on for several years.
[00:44:42.040 --> 00:44:46.600] In fact, you'd left the BBC by the time the show actually finished.
[00:44:46.600 --> 00:44:47.000] Oh, wow.
[00:44:47.000 --> 00:44:48.840] And Michael Grade was like, well, no, it stopped.
[00:44:48.840 --> 00:44:50.600] I told him to stop it, and it stopped.
[00:44:50.600 --> 00:45:06.040] And it's a weird moment in that interview where Matthew Sweet kind of realizes he doesn't know that the program carried on for four years after he insisted that it's even well, it might have done one more because the funding was already committed, but it stopped.
[00:45:06.040 --> 00:45:06.760] It fucking didn't.
[00:45:07.000 --> 00:45:08.120] Might say not.
[00:45:08.760 --> 00:45:09.800] But there we go.
[00:45:09.800 --> 00:45:11.000] So that's Matthew Sweet.
[00:45:11.160 --> 00:45:12.280] That's going to be brilliant.
[00:45:12.280 --> 00:45:16.040] The next person that we've got to announce is Sean Norris.
[00:45:16.040 --> 00:45:20.680] Yes, Sean is an investigative journalist, a writer who's written for lots and lots of different newspapers.
[00:45:20.680 --> 00:45:25.720] She's got a book all about the far-right attack on bodies and women's bodies in particular.
[00:45:25.720 --> 00:45:26.040] Yes.
[00:45:26.040 --> 00:45:29.160] And so that I think is going to be a really interesting area to talk about.
[00:45:29.160 --> 00:45:30.120] It's so, so relevant.
[00:45:30.120 --> 00:45:32.200] We cover these kind of things on this show all the time, Alice.
[00:45:32.200 --> 00:45:35.080] You bring these kind of stories to us an awful lot.
[00:45:35.160 --> 00:45:37.800] So I think she's going to be a really, really interesting speaker.
[00:45:37.800 --> 00:45:40.920] I realized that we were looking for someone to cover that kind of topic.
[00:45:40.920 --> 00:45:45.120] And we came across her work because of the book and because of other kind of things she wrote.
[00:45:45.120 --> 00:45:46.240] And then we booked her.
[00:45:46.240 --> 00:45:48.480] And then I went to try and write up the announcement.
[00:45:48.480 --> 00:45:49.280] And I googled her.
[00:45:49.360 --> 00:45:51.120] I was like, oh, I followed her on Twitter for years.
[00:45:44.680 --> 00:45:52.160] I recognize her Twitter handle.
[00:45:52.240 --> 00:45:53.440] I know exactly who that is.
[00:45:53.440 --> 00:45:56.080] I just didn't put the two together until we actually booked her for QED.
[00:45:56.080 --> 00:45:57.440] She's going to be absolutely excellent.
[00:45:57.440 --> 00:45:58.080] Yeah.
[00:45:58.400 --> 00:46:00.160] That's going to be very exciting.
[00:46:00.160 --> 00:46:05.600] The other thing about QED is a lot of conferences do CFP to try and get people in.
[00:46:05.600 --> 00:46:07.920] They do what they refer to as the call for papers.
[00:46:07.920 --> 00:46:10.320] So where you pitch a talk to the conference.
[00:46:10.320 --> 00:46:11.840] And QED doesn't do that.
[00:46:11.840 --> 00:46:16.800] QED, generally speaking, we invite you to come and do QED because we think something's interesting.
[00:46:16.800 --> 00:46:23.200] In fact, we have a kind of informal rule of if you ask to speak to QED, then no, you cannot speak to QD.
[00:46:23.680 --> 00:46:24.000] Yeah, yeah.
[00:46:24.960 --> 00:46:26.400] That is a breakable rule.
[00:46:26.400 --> 00:46:29.680] And there are people who would be accepted to that.
[00:46:29.680 --> 00:46:35.440] But we do, it rings a tiny little alarm bell that we want to be able to.
[00:46:35.680 --> 00:46:37.840] If you're seeking the platform, you probably shouldn't have a public.
[00:46:38.000 --> 00:46:40.640] Especially if you haven't spoken for us before.
[00:46:40.880 --> 00:46:41.440] That's the key.
[00:46:41.920 --> 00:46:46.400] If we've never seen you speak and you say, I should do a thing for you, it's like, okay, you probably shouldn't.
[00:46:47.200 --> 00:46:50.240] But this speaker is a speaker we know very, very well on their speaker.
[00:46:50.480 --> 00:46:55.760] We did flex that rule a little bit for the next speaker who approached us and said, I've got this great idea for a talk.
[00:46:55.760 --> 00:46:57.120] And that is Paul Zennon.
[00:46:57.120 --> 00:46:59.760] Yeah, so Paul Zennon, Paul's done so many things for us at QED.
[00:46:59.760 --> 00:47:09.040] He's been the MC, he's been in our intro videos, he's done a talk about psychics, he's done our cabaret evening on a couple of times, he's been on panels about magic and ethics and stuff.
[00:47:09.040 --> 00:47:11.040] And Paul came to us saying, it's the last one.
[00:47:11.280 --> 00:47:12.240] I love QED.
[00:47:12.240 --> 00:47:21.080] I don't suppose you'd be interested in this show I've done for Edinburgh, which I knew he'd done it for Edinburgh, and it never crossed our mind that it'd be absolutely perfect and really cool for QED.
[00:47:21.080 --> 00:47:32.440] Where he's going to be looking at essentially the weird adverts you got advertised at the back of vintage American Comics for things like x-ray specs and sea monkeys and all those kind of oddities.
[00:47:29.680 --> 00:47:32.520] Yeah.
[00:47:32.680 --> 00:47:34.040] And where do those ads come from?
[00:47:34.040 --> 00:47:35.320] What actually are those products?
[00:47:35.400 --> 00:47:36.920] What's the history to them?
[00:47:36.920 --> 00:47:41.080] And he said it's like a science-laced nostalgia kind of story that he's telling.
[00:47:41.240 --> 00:47:43.720] It did really well at the Edinburgh Festival, and he's going to be doing that for us.
[00:47:43.720 --> 00:47:48.440] And I think it'd be a really interesting, a subject we'd never think to put on the main stage.
[00:47:48.440 --> 00:47:54.680] But I bet there are so many people in our audience who know those ads inside out, who find that kind of stuff absolutely fascinating.
[00:47:54.760 --> 00:47:55.800] Would love to know the history of it.
[00:47:55.800 --> 00:47:57.560] And I explained this to Noah when I was talking to you today.
[00:47:57.560 --> 00:47:58.920] He's like, oh my God, that sounds amazing.
[00:47:58.920 --> 00:48:00.440] So yeah, really excited about that.
[00:48:00.440 --> 00:48:02.200] So that's going to be fantastic.
[00:48:02.200 --> 00:48:06.680] So if you would like to come along to QED, you can buy an online ticket at qdcon.org.
[00:48:06.680 --> 00:48:07.800] They are £49.
[00:48:07.960 --> 00:48:11.800] You can join the waiting list for in-person tickets at tickets at qdcon.org.
[00:48:11.800 --> 00:48:19.000] If you buy an online ticket and join the waiting list and you subsequently get an in-person ticket, we will refund your online ticket.
[00:48:19.080 --> 00:48:19.320] Yes.
[00:48:19.640 --> 00:48:23.480] So that's not something that you need to worry about of trying to hedge your bets there.
[00:48:23.480 --> 00:48:24.760] It's totally fine to do that.
[00:48:24.760 --> 00:48:27.400] We'll sort that out and we'll make sure that you're taken care of.
[00:48:28.040 --> 00:48:30.040] So yeah, you should definitely come along to that.
[00:48:30.040 --> 00:48:31.480] Alice, you're doing a talk.
[00:48:31.480 --> 00:48:31.800] I am.
[00:48:31.800 --> 00:48:36.120] I'm doing a talk on Monday, Monday the 21st in Sheffield.
[00:48:36.120 --> 00:48:38.920] It's been a while since I spoke at Sheffield Skeptics, but I'm really looking forward to it.
[00:48:39.000 --> 00:48:40.120] I really like Sheffield Skeptics.
[00:48:40.200 --> 00:48:41.240] I love Sheffield City.
[00:48:41.400 --> 00:48:42.600] They're a lovely group.
[00:48:42.600 --> 00:48:48.680] So, yes, I'm doing my women and wellness empowerment versus exploitation talk.
[00:48:49.320 --> 00:48:50.440] So that will be very funny.
[00:48:50.600 --> 00:48:52.520] And you'll know it more to heart than you.
[00:48:53.480 --> 00:48:56.760] Well, I've got you've never done that talk the same way twice, though, Alice.
[00:48:56.920 --> 00:48:57.800] You fuck with it every time.
[00:48:57.960 --> 00:49:00.280] I fuck with it every time, and I'm genuinely.
[00:49

Prompt 2: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 3: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 4: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Prompt 5: Context Setup

You are an expert data extractor tasked with analyzing a podcast transcript. 
I will provide you with part 2 of 2 from a podcast transcript. 
I will then ask you to extract different types of information from this content in subsequent messages. Please confirm you have received and understood the transcript content.

Transcript section:
, oh my God, that sounds amazing.
[00:47:58.920 --> 00:48:00.440] So yeah, really excited about that.
[00:48:00.440 --> 00:48:02.200] So that's going to be fantastic.
[00:48:02.200 --> 00:48:06.680] So if you would like to come along to QED, you can buy an online ticket at qdcon.org.
[00:48:06.680 --> 00:48:07.800] They are £49.
[00:48:07.960 --> 00:48:11.800] You can join the waiting list for in-person tickets at tickets at qdcon.org.
[00:48:11.800 --> 00:48:19.000] If you buy an online ticket and join the waiting list and you subsequently get an in-person ticket, we will refund your online ticket.
[00:48:19.080 --> 00:48:19.320] Yes.
[00:48:19.640 --> 00:48:23.480] So that's not something that you need to worry about of trying to hedge your bets there.
[00:48:23.480 --> 00:48:24.760] It's totally fine to do that.
[00:48:24.760 --> 00:48:27.400] We'll sort that out and we'll make sure that you're taken care of.
[00:48:28.040 --> 00:48:30.040] So yeah, you should definitely come along to that.
[00:48:30.040 --> 00:48:31.480] Alice, you're doing a talk.
[00:48:31.480 --> 00:48:31.800] I am.
[00:48:31.800 --> 00:48:36.120] I'm doing a talk on Monday, Monday the 21st in Sheffield.
[00:48:36.120 --> 00:48:38.920] It's been a while since I spoke at Sheffield Skeptics, but I'm really looking forward to it.
[00:48:39.000 --> 00:48:40.120] I really like Sheffield Skeptics.
[00:48:40.200 --> 00:48:41.240] I love Sheffield City.
[00:48:41.400 --> 00:48:42.600] They're a lovely group.
[00:48:42.600 --> 00:48:48.680] So, yes, I'm doing my women and wellness empowerment versus exploitation talk.
[00:48:49.320 --> 00:48:50.440] So that will be very funny.
[00:48:50.600 --> 00:48:52.520] And you'll know it more to heart than you.
[00:48:53.480 --> 00:48:56.760] Well, I've got you've never done that talk the same way twice, though, Alice.
[00:48:56.920 --> 00:48:57.800] You fuck with it every time.
[00:48:57.960 --> 00:49:00.280] I fuck with it every time, and I'm genuinely.
[00:49:00.280 --> 00:49:04.920] I may not have time to fuck with it for this time because I'm incredibly busy with work at the minute.
[00:49:04.920 --> 00:49:08.600] But my intent, I've got a different angle that I want to spin into it.
[00:49:08.600 --> 00:49:12.120] So I may, it may be slightly reworked by Monday.
[00:49:12.120 --> 00:49:16.960] If not, it will definitely be reworked by the time I next give it, which is later in the year.
[00:49:16.960 --> 00:49:25.120] But that's, yeah, that's at Sheffield Skeptics in the Pub, which is at the Farm Road Sports and Social Club and is at 7:30pm on this coming Monday.
[00:49:25.120 --> 00:49:29.120] Yeah, and if you just Google Sheffield Skeptics, you will find all about that talk, I'm sure.
[00:49:29.120 --> 00:49:31.200] Aside from that, then I think that is all we have time for.
[00:49:31.200 --> 00:49:32.160] I think it probably is.
[00:49:32.160 --> 00:49:34.960] All that remains then is for me to thank Marsh for coming along today.
[00:49:34.960 --> 00:49:35.600] Cheers.
[00:49:35.600 --> 00:49:36.720] Thank you to Alice.
[00:49:36.720 --> 00:49:37.360] Thank you.
[00:49:37.360 --> 00:49:38.880] We have been Skeptics with a K.
[00:49:38.880 --> 00:49:40.000] We will see you next time.
[00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:40.560] Bye now.
[00:49:40.560 --> 00:49:41.280] Bye.
[00:49:46.080 --> 00:49:51.120] Skeptics with a K is produced by Skeptic Media in association with the Merseyside Skeptic Society.
[00:49:51.120 --> 00:50:00.160] For questions or comments, email podcast at skepticswithakay.org and you can find out more about Merseyside Skeptics at merseyside skeptics.org.uk.

Prompt 6: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 7: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 8: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Full Transcript

[00:00:00.960 --> 00:00:07.200] A mochi moment from Mark, who writes, I just want to thank you for making GOP1s affordable.
[00:00:07.200 --> 00:00:12.160] What would have been over $1,000 a month is just $99 a month with Mochi.
[00:00:12.160 --> 00:00:14.640] Money shouldn't be a barrier to healthy weight.
[00:00:14.640 --> 00:00:17.920] Three months in, and I have smaller jeans and a bigger wallet.
[00:00:17.920 --> 00:00:19.120] You're the best.
[00:00:19.120 --> 00:00:20.240] Thanks, Mark.
[00:00:20.240 --> 00:00:23.120] I'm Myra Ameth, founder of Mochi Health.
[00:00:23.120 --> 00:00:27.040] To find your Mochi moment, visit joinmochi.com.
[00:00:27.040 --> 00:00:30.320] Mark is a mochi member compensated for his story.
[00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:44.720] It is Thursday, the 17th of July, 2025, and you're listening to Skeptics with a K, the podcast for science, reason, and critical thinking.
[00:00:44.720 --> 00:00:56.000] Skeptics with a K is produced by Skeptic Media in association with the Merseyside Skeptic Society, a non-profit organization for the promotion of scientific skepticism on Merseyside around the UK and internationally.
[00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:57.360] I'm your host, Mike Hall.
[00:00:57.360 --> 00:00:58.560] With me today is Marsh.
[00:00:58.560 --> 00:00:59.040] Hello.
[00:00:59.040 --> 00:00:59.920] And Alice.
[00:00:59.920 --> 00:01:00.720] Hello.
[00:01:00.720 --> 00:01:03.440] Oh, so it has been really warm.
[00:01:03.680 --> 00:01:04.400] It's been warm out here.
[00:01:04.640 --> 00:01:05.520] It has been so warm.
[00:01:06.400 --> 00:01:07.680] I don't know that I can cope.
[00:01:07.840 --> 00:01:08.960] It's too hot for me to cope.
[00:01:09.360 --> 00:01:11.120] I can't manage this kind of heat.
[00:01:11.120 --> 00:01:12.560] The days are all really long.
[00:01:12.560 --> 00:01:13.280] They're humid.
[00:01:13.280 --> 00:01:14.720] They're oppressively warm.
[00:01:14.720 --> 00:01:21.120] It's quite funny because I've been seeing a lot of, I've not been seeing people on social media necessarily complaining about the weather.
[00:01:21.120 --> 00:01:35.760] I've seen specifically Americans on social media complaining about the weather in the UK and acknowledging that they have previously been wrong to chastise British people for complaining about hot weather in the UK.
[00:01:35.760 --> 00:01:39.840] So I've been seeing very meta conversations about the weather in the UK.
[00:01:39.840 --> 00:01:45.360] As always happens when I'm doing a story, Alice, pin in the first thing that you say because I will certainly come to that.
[00:01:45.360 --> 00:01:47.360] It's a conversation I've had with Katie as well.
[00:01:47.520 --> 00:01:50.800] There's this thing that Americans have where they say British weather hits different.
[00:01:51.120 --> 00:01:52.320] British hot hits different.
[00:01:52.320 --> 00:01:54.160] And I've said to Katie, is that true?
[00:01:54.160 --> 00:01:54.720] Is that the case?
[00:01:54.720 --> 00:02:01.560] Because obviously, Katie lived in San Antonio where it was 90 plus Fahrenheit most of the time, but it's also very humid.
[00:02:01.560 --> 00:02:02.280] Yes, yeah, yeah.
[00:02:02.280 --> 00:02:04.360] Texas is pretty bad, just generally.
[00:01:59.520 --> 00:02:06.360] And she's going, Oh, Christ, no, Britain's so much worse.
[00:02:06.520 --> 00:02:08.200] When it's hot, it's fucking intolerable.
[00:02:08.200 --> 00:02:13.560] And she's looking at the she's feeling and thinking it must be like 100 degrees.
[00:02:13.560 --> 00:02:18.920] And she looks at the temperature, and it's like 75 Fahrenheit and goes, What the fuck?
[00:02:18.920 --> 00:02:20.280] What are you doing, Britain?
[00:02:20.280 --> 00:02:21.560] How the fuck have you pulled this off?
[00:02:21.560 --> 00:02:23.720] And it's not just during the day, like the nights have been bad.
[00:02:23.880 --> 00:02:26.120] Last night, as of recording, last night was terrible.
[00:02:26.120 --> 00:02:29.640] It's like sticky and close, and it's like throw your duvet away, kind of warm.
[00:02:29.640 --> 00:02:32.440] And I've got a massive fan on my ceiling that spins quite quick.
[00:02:33.320 --> 00:02:35.480] Just sits there and says, Marsh, you're so great.
[00:02:35.480 --> 00:02:35.800] So great.
[00:02:35.800 --> 00:02:36.280] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:02:37.480 --> 00:02:37.800] Can I look?
[00:02:37.800 --> 00:02:39.000] Can you do another podcast?
[00:02:40.680 --> 00:02:48.680] My bedroom is specifically particularly horrific because we get the sun in the late afternoon on that side of the house.
[00:02:48.680 --> 00:02:52.920] It just heats up and heats up and heats up through two massive glass windows.
[00:02:52.920 --> 00:02:54.600] Because the windows on these houses are massive.
[00:02:54.840 --> 00:02:56.440] Yeah, they're decently reasonably big.
[00:02:56.440 --> 00:03:00.360] They're not like your kind of little boxy windows that you get on new build houses.
[00:03:00.360 --> 00:03:05.640] But also, so the sun's coming in, all the heat from the rest of the house is rising into the bedroom.
[00:03:05.640 --> 00:03:09.960] And of course, asleep in a bedroom with two dogs, in a bed with two dogs.
[00:03:09.960 --> 00:03:12.840] It was horrific last night and the night before.
[00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:13.800] It's been so bad.
[00:03:14.040 --> 00:03:15.560] I've been sleeping on top of the covers.
[00:03:15.560 --> 00:03:15.880] Yeah.
[00:03:15.880 --> 00:03:19.960] I've just been slept on the bed, not in the bed in any capacity.
[00:03:19.960 --> 00:03:24.200] I went to retrieve my flat sheet yesterday because I have a flat sheet for this very purpose.
[00:03:24.600 --> 00:03:26.360] I don't know what a flat sheet is, but carry on.
[00:03:26.360 --> 00:03:27.080] Just a single sheet.
[00:03:27.320 --> 00:03:28.360] A non-fitted sheet.
[00:03:28.360 --> 00:03:28.600] Yeah.
[00:03:28.600 --> 00:03:32.840] A non-fitted sheet that you can just throw over you so that you're covered, but you're not.
[00:03:33.080 --> 00:03:34.520] No, a sheet is fine.
[00:03:34.920 --> 00:03:39.640] But it turned out our, for some reason, our flat sheet smelt weirdly of damp.
[00:03:39.640 --> 00:03:43.080] So I've had to throw that in the wash and use just an empty duvet case.
[00:03:43.080 --> 00:03:43.720] Right.
[00:03:43.720 --> 00:03:44.200] Yeah.
[00:03:44.200 --> 00:03:44.520] So.
[00:03:44.520 --> 00:03:46.000] No, I've just raw dogged it.
[00:03:44.680 --> 00:03:48.400] I've just, I'm just lying on the bed.
[00:03:48.400 --> 00:03:50.400] Well, it's kind of gone past the point of being lovely.
[00:03:44.840 --> 00:03:51.760] It's kind of actively unpleasant now.
[00:03:52.080 --> 00:03:55.280] And we're coming out of our third heat wave of the year so far.
[00:03:55.680 --> 00:03:56.560] We have had quite a few, yeah.
[00:03:56.720 --> 00:03:58.640] That's like around the last weekend.
[00:03:58.640 --> 00:04:03.280] We've had days here in Liverpool where it was like 30 degrees, something there, Celsius, in that kind of area.
[00:04:03.280 --> 00:04:04.560] And that's hot for around here.
[00:04:04.720 --> 00:04:10.640] 30 degrees, once you get to 30, when I was on a holiday in Croatia, there were days that it was 30 degrees, and that was the days that Nicola just shut down.
[00:04:10.640 --> 00:04:12.720] She cannot function in 30 degrees.
[00:04:12.720 --> 00:04:16.960] And it comes off the back of similar temperatures that we had at the start of July.
[00:04:16.960 --> 00:04:19.680] And we had another one of our three heat waves.
[00:04:19.680 --> 00:04:24.480] During that period, Kent saw temperatures hit 35.8 degrees Celsius.
[00:04:24.960 --> 00:04:31.120] Took me a minute to register that you're talking about the place and not some person called Kent who paid Britain for some reason to tell us.
[00:04:31.120 --> 00:04:32.480] Yeah, we had Kent from Kent.
[00:04:32.480 --> 00:04:42.000] And 35.8 degrees Celsius is just four and a half degrees short of the hottest temperature ever recorded in the UK, which is when Lincolnshire hit 40.3 degrees Celsius.
[00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:43.760] And that was only in 2022.
[00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:45.600] So that was also very recently.
[00:04:45.680 --> 00:04:49.920] So we've had some quite intense heat waves over the last few years in the UK.
[00:04:49.920 --> 00:04:58.880] And two weeks before the heat wave at the start of July, around about mid-June, we had the first heat wave of the year hitting 32 degrees Celsius in southeast of England in mid-June.
[00:04:58.880 --> 00:05:06.320] And it resulted in the death of an estimated 600 people in England and Wales because heat waves come with mortality because we're not built for it.
[00:05:06.320 --> 00:05:07.840] We're not ready for this.
[00:05:07.840 --> 00:05:18.040] And we're relatively lucky in the north in that this heat wave has been particularly has hit us quite hard up here but the two previous ones, it didn't get anywhere near as hot as it did in the south.
[00:05:18.040 --> 00:05:19.800] Yeah, it's far, far hotter in the south.
[00:05:19.800 --> 00:05:21.960] And we've still got months left of summer as well.
[00:05:21.960 --> 00:05:26.840] And the likelihood is we're going to face some extreme temperatures at another point over the next couple of months.
[00:05:26.840 --> 00:05:30.600] This isn't normal, or at least it wasn't normal.
[00:05:29.600 --> 00:05:32.920] It essentially is normal for us now.
[00:05:29.760 --> 00:05:44.680] There's actually a new report that was published today from the Royal Meteorological Society's International Journal of Climatology, which highlighted how normalized extreme temperatures are becoming in the UK as a result of climate change.
[00:05:44.680 --> 00:05:46.440] Today, as of recording.
[00:05:46.440 --> 00:05:48.600] Today, as of recording, Monday 14th.
[00:05:48.600 --> 00:05:49.160] Yeah.
[00:05:49.480 --> 00:06:01.480] As the Met Office press release explained, quote, the last three years have been in the UK's top five warmest on record, with 2024 the fourth warmest year in records dating back to 1884.
[00:06:01.480 --> 00:06:03.240] And so this is quite extreme.
[00:06:03.240 --> 00:06:05.560] Last year we saw the warmest May on record.
[00:06:05.560 --> 00:06:07.960] We saw the warmest spring on record.
[00:06:07.960 --> 00:06:11.720] February of last year was the second warmest February ever recorded.
[00:06:11.720 --> 00:06:14.520] Last year had a top five warmest winter.
[00:06:14.520 --> 00:06:18.120] 2025 seems set to beat at least some of those records.
[00:06:18.120 --> 00:06:20.280] Another record is going to fall this year probably.
[00:06:20.280 --> 00:06:25.720] For parts of the UK, six of the 10 warmest years on record have come in the last decade.
[00:06:25.720 --> 00:06:27.640] Six of the ten hottest ever.
[00:06:27.640 --> 00:06:30.440] And those records go back as far as 1780s.
[00:06:30.440 --> 00:06:35.480] So of the 10 hottest years since the 1780s, six of them are in the last 10 years.
[00:06:35.480 --> 00:06:39.240] But the thing is, it's not even just the high temperatures that are an issue here in the UK.
[00:06:39.240 --> 00:06:42.200] It's also the increasing extremity of the temperatures.
[00:06:42.360 --> 00:06:48.040] Because it's not that temperature has been steadily rising at the same rate evenly across the entire year.
[00:06:48.040 --> 00:06:54.520] What's happening is now we're far more likely to suffer extreme highs and then also at other points, extreme lows.
[00:06:54.520 --> 00:07:03.920] So if you take this is going to sound a little bit mathsy, a little bit stancy, but if you follow me here, if you take the average daily temperatures from 1961 to 1990 as a baseline.
[00:07:03.640 --> 00:07:05.480] So, so what's the average January the 1st?
[00:07:05.480 --> 00:07:06.760] What's the average July the 1st?
[00:07:06.760 --> 00:07:09.880] Across those 30 years, take an average, there's your baseline.
[00:07:09.880 --> 00:07:15.200] The number of days that are five Celsius above that baseline have doubled in the last decade.
[00:07:13.720 --> 00:07:19.680] The number that are 10 Celsius above that baseline have quadrupled in the last decade.
[00:07:21.120 --> 00:07:30.320] So, we are now, on average, there is more than three days per year that are 10 degrees higher than a 30-year baseline for that day of the year.
[00:07:30.320 --> 00:07:37.920] So, in the lifetime of this show, even this country has become significantly hotter and with significantly more extreme temperature days.
[00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:40.080] Makes it sound like it's our fault when you break it like that.
[00:07:40.480 --> 00:07:42.320] It does sound like it's our fault.
[00:07:42.960 --> 00:07:52.080] And then we take into account things like the extreme rainfall that we're seeing again, both as an average daily rainfall and in an increase in extreme flooding events.
[00:07:52.080 --> 00:08:04.320] So, for the decade from 2015 to 2024, the winter half-year, which is essentially October through to March, that is now 16% wetter than the baseline period 1961 to 1990.
[00:08:04.320 --> 00:08:11.360] The previous winter, October 2023 to March 2024, was the wettest period in recorded history in this country.
[00:08:11.920 --> 00:08:14.960] Those records go back to 1767, the rainfall records.
[00:08:14.960 --> 00:08:21.040] So, the record rainfall in that six-month period going back to 1767.
[00:08:21.360 --> 00:08:30.480] Since that time, since 1767, six of the 10 wettest winter half years for England and Wales have been in the 21st century.
[00:08:30.480 --> 00:08:33.680] Sorry, I'm not passing the wettest winter half years.
[00:08:33.680 --> 00:08:47.440] So, the half year from October to March, you take the average rainfall in that period, and 2023 to 24 has the highest average rainfall in UK history in that period.
[00:08:47.440 --> 00:08:52.080] So, it's just confusing calling that period of time the winter half year, but I get it.
[00:08:52.080 --> 00:08:52.640] Okay, that's fine.
[00:08:52.880 --> 00:08:56.320] And I think it is equated that way in weather terms because they'll talk about the summer half and the winter half.
[00:08:56.320 --> 00:08:59.120] So, if you talk to Nicaragua about her job, she'll bring that up quite a bit.
[00:08:59.360 --> 00:09:00.000] Yeah, no, I get that.
[00:09:00.120 --> 00:09:07.560] And I get that you have to clarify because the winter half in down under is a different time of year to us.
[00:09:07.880 --> 00:09:08.120] Exactly.
[00:09:08.120 --> 00:09:12.040] So it's termed by the Met Office and things as the winter half of the year.
[00:09:12.040 --> 00:09:19.720] And so the winter half of the year from October 2023 to March 2024 was the wettest period we've ever had in this country.
[00:09:19.720 --> 00:09:25.400] And six of the ten wettest years that we've ever had are in this century.
[00:09:25.400 --> 00:09:32.040] And as we've seen numerous times, most notably very recently in Texas, extreme weather events can be incredibly deadly.
[00:09:32.040 --> 00:09:44.920] And it's because, with them being so extreme, they're unexpected, they're sudden, and they're often unprecedented because they often hit areas that aren't prepared for them because they haven't had a significant history of such events until recently.
[00:09:44.920 --> 00:09:46.840] And now these are becoming more and more common.
[00:09:46.840 --> 00:09:57.480] And people really do struggle with identifying the symptoms of overheating because if you're not watching out for it, they're not intuitive, they're not necessarily obvious symptoms.
[00:09:57.480 --> 00:09:57.800] And they're not.
[00:09:57.880 --> 00:09:59.720] And the ones you'd be looking out here for.
[00:09:59.720 --> 00:10:00.440] Yeah, yeah.
[00:10:00.440 --> 00:10:06.120] And the ones that assign a sign of real trouble become almost confusing.
[00:10:06.120 --> 00:10:17.160] Like once you get into real extreme overheating and heat stroke, you get some really weird symptoms that you wouldn't necessarily correlate to overheating unless you were aware of what overheating looked like.
[00:10:17.160 --> 00:10:17.560] Yeah, exactly.
[00:10:17.560 --> 00:10:26.200] And then similarly, when it comes to rainfall, you'll have it where even if there is a flood predicted, people think they know what a flood is for where they live.
[00:10:26.200 --> 00:10:33.640] And then you see footage of what happened in Texas and the way that the riverbank roars very dramatically, in a very, very short space of time, like huge, massive flooding.
[00:10:33.640 --> 00:10:37.360] We're just not prepared for that because if you're not expecting that to happen, because it doesn't normally happen here.
[00:10:37.080 --> 00:10:40.200] Then, then your baseline for normality is out of whack.
[00:10:40.200 --> 00:10:41.800] And all of this should be a massive concern.
[00:10:41.800 --> 00:10:46.240] And I'm sure our listeners are very well aware of how concerned we should be about this.
[00:10:46.560 --> 00:10:57.360] Except perhaps there might be one or two listeners who might be old enough to remember the famous summer of 1976, which is the year that the UK had a heat wave that lasted 16 consecutive days in the middle of June.
[00:10:57.360 --> 00:11:00.800] It is always referred to as the long, hot summer of 1976.
[00:11:01.040 --> 00:11:02.640] That's how they like to refer to it.
[00:11:02.640 --> 00:11:06.640] And so it is longer than the heat waves that we've experienced this June, July.
[00:11:06.640 --> 00:11:11.600] I think it's longer than those three heat waves cumulatively, in fact, for a 16-day period.
[00:11:11.600 --> 00:11:26.480] But the thing about that is, if you are tempted to use the fact of that long, hot summer of 1976 to argue that the country isn't getting hotter, you might want to consider that even with those 16 days of extreme heat, June 1976 was cooler on average than June 2025.
[00:11:26.800 --> 00:11:31.600] The month we've just had was hotter than the long, hot summer of 1976.
[00:11:31.600 --> 00:11:34.480] That wasn't normal, and now it is.
[00:11:34.480 --> 00:11:39.280] Now, obviously, you've got listeners in another part of the world, and they're going to scoff at 30-degree Celsius heat.
[00:11:39.280 --> 00:11:50.720] I actually spent several recording sessions last week with No Illusions from Scathing Atheist, and he was sweltering in Georgia, USA, under a heat index of 100 Fahrenheit, which is in excess of 38 Celsius.
[00:11:50.720 --> 00:11:56.640] And it's a lot hotter than here, a lot hotter than we would ever like, well, than hitherto have been likely to get here in the US.
[00:11:56.640 --> 00:12:03.120] And I know that because he mentioned it each time he apologetically paused the recording to understandably turn on his air conditioning for a while.
[00:12:03.120 --> 00:12:05.360] Because Jesus Christ, it's 100 Fahrenheit here.
[00:12:05.360 --> 00:12:07.600] I need the air conditioning in between stories.
[00:12:07.600 --> 00:12:10.240] But air conditioning isn't a thing we do in the UK.
[00:12:10.240 --> 00:12:11.120] That's the problem.
[00:12:11.120 --> 00:12:14.640] You get it in hotels, you get it in shops, cinemas, big public spaces.
[00:12:14.640 --> 00:12:20.320] But how many people have you ever met here who have air conditioning installed in their home?
[00:12:20.320 --> 00:12:20.880] I do.
[00:12:20.880 --> 00:12:22.160] You do because you live in a block of flats.
[00:12:22.240 --> 00:12:23.040] Because I live in a block of flats.
[00:12:23.040 --> 00:12:24.560] And a fairly modern block of flats at that.
[00:12:24.560 --> 00:12:26.000] And that is unusual.
[00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:26.320] Yeah.
[00:12:26.320 --> 00:12:28.400] You know, that is very, very unusual.
[00:12:28.400 --> 00:12:29.720] My parents just got it installed.
[00:12:30.040 --> 00:12:31.240] Of course, your parents just got it installed.
[00:12:28.640 --> 00:12:33.080] Of course, your parents have it.
[00:12:28.960 --> 00:12:34.520] Of course, they just got it installed.
[00:12:29.280 --> 00:12:36.280] But they didn't have it installed and now they have it.
[00:12:36.520 --> 00:12:37.240] But it is unusual.
[00:12:37.880 --> 00:12:40.280] We can argue that it's unusual.
[00:12:40.280 --> 00:12:49.960] Whereas when I've been to Texas, you go from an air-conditioned house into an air-conditioned car, into an air-conditioned shopping center, and you're very rarely in the naked heat.
[00:12:49.960 --> 00:12:52.840] It's just you go from air-conditioned space to air-conditioned space.
[00:12:53.080 --> 00:12:57.640] The risk in hot countries is you wander around actually cold because the air conditioning.
[00:12:57.640 --> 00:13:02.440] So I go to really hot places and I have to take a little jacket for when I go into the tents because it's so freaking cold.
[00:13:02.600 --> 00:13:03.400] We're going indoors now.
[00:13:03.400 --> 00:13:04.200] Put your coat on.
[00:13:04.920 --> 00:13:13.320] But home use air conditioning in the UK is practically zero apart from fairly modern block of flats and things because it's something we've never needed really here.
[00:13:13.320 --> 00:13:14.760] But that is something that's beginning to change.
[00:13:14.760 --> 00:13:22.040] So according to industry reports, and these are industry reports, you know, taken with a pinch of salt because they are designed to persuade you to get on board with a new trend.
[00:13:22.040 --> 00:13:29.960] But according to those reports, 3% of UK homes had some form of air conditioning in 2011, and that's risen to 20% by 2022.
[00:13:29.960 --> 00:13:32.120] And they're just a homesowned, Alice's parents' own homes?
[00:13:32.200 --> 00:13:33.400] Just Alice's parents' homes.
[00:13:33.720 --> 00:13:41.320] And I wouldn't take those figures as gospel, but I do think it's true that the extreme heat that we're seeing, when it's more and more, is going to lead people to seek ways to keep cool at home.
[00:13:41.320 --> 00:13:42.600] And that's going to be air conditioning.
[00:13:42.600 --> 00:13:47.320] So in France, for example, they've had similar kind of heat waves of late, slightly higher temperatures because they're slightly further south.
[00:13:47.480 --> 00:13:49.240] We've had some really intense heat waves this year.
[00:13:49.240 --> 00:13:55.720] And in France, home aircon coverage has gone from 14% in 2016 to 25% in 2020.
[00:13:55.720 --> 00:14:00.440] And I wouldn't be surprised if the last four or five years has seen another chunk of increase there.
[00:14:00.440 --> 00:14:08.200] And here in the UK, the fact that we are situated downstream of American culture means what's normal for the US could very easily become more normal for us as well.
[00:14:08.200 --> 00:14:16.320] But the thing is, I'm not persuaded that air conditioning is the solution that we're looking for here in the UK, because those AC units don't run on fresh air.
[00:14:14.760 --> 00:14:18.880] They consume power, quite a lot of power, in fact.
[00:14:19.200 --> 00:14:27.760] So according to the US Department of Energy, because in America there is a much wider coverage of AirCon, about 12% of energy consumption in homes goes on running the AirCon.
[00:14:27.760 --> 00:14:35.840] And according to numbers in a 2019 report from the International Energy Authority, they are the IEA that don't deny the climate crisis.
[00:14:35.840 --> 00:14:38.960] We will come to the other IEA that do a little bit later.
[00:14:38.960 --> 00:14:49.040] But according to that, the International Energy Authority, if the rest of the world was going to adopt such widespread aircon usage, it would produce 2 billion tons of CO2 annually, just cooling yourself.
[00:14:49.040 --> 00:14:54.960] So as the world heats, our go-to solution to overheated houses might only exacerbate the situation.
[00:14:55.200 --> 00:15:01.200] I feel like I do have to justify my parents' air conditioning in saying that they have a lot of solar panels on the roof of the house.
[00:15:01.200 --> 00:15:05.760] Yeah, pin in that to where I'm going right now, because this is something I feel pretty strongly about.
[00:15:05.760 --> 00:15:15.760] And I've actually considered whether I should get a small AC unit installed in my house, because my office, where I spend most of the time at the back of the house, gets oppressively hot in the afternoons when the summer sun hits it.
[00:15:15.760 --> 00:15:19.520] But my rationale would be: I've got solar panels on my house.
[00:15:19.520 --> 00:15:25.840] I only want to run the AC when it's particularly hot, which is when the sun is out, which is when the electricity is free.
[00:15:25.840 --> 00:15:29.280] I'm still not persuaded that justification is enough to make it worthwhile for me.
[00:15:29.280 --> 00:15:32.560] So I haven't gone further than the kind of idle consideration of it.
[00:15:32.560 --> 00:15:40.880] But I'm a big, big believer in taking the step that we each can to conserve energy, avoid waste, tackle climate change, and take it seriously.
[00:15:40.880 --> 00:15:45.200] But obviously, that is nowhere near enough for us to just do these little things ourselves.
[00:15:45.200 --> 00:15:50.720] I've covered in the past my firm belief that electronic advertising is an unforgivable climate crime.
[00:15:50.720 --> 00:15:58.400] Companies running huge power-guzzling billboards at eye-piercing brightnesses just to serve you adverts you didn't want to see.
[00:15:58.400 --> 00:16:11.320] I remember there was a story when I covered it, and I worked out that each of the large-sized 62-square-meter screens that you get in sort of big city centers consumes annually enough energy to run 32 households.
[00:16:11.320 --> 00:16:15.400] And there's about 14,500 advertising screens across the country.
[00:16:15.400 --> 00:16:18.600] They could be powering more than 50,000 homes in total.
[00:16:18.920 --> 00:16:20.120] Such a waste of energy.
[00:16:20.120 --> 00:16:26.680] Did I tell you that when I went to speak in Utrecht a few months ago, I can't remember where this was, and it might have been Skipall Airport.
[00:16:26.680 --> 00:16:30.600] And listeners will correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm sure plenty of people have been through that airport.
[00:16:30.600 --> 00:16:42.600] But I went to the bathroom somewhere, and as I approached the mirrors to wash my hands, a video advert started playing on the screen of the mirror that was playing on a loop.
[00:16:42.600 --> 00:16:47.880] And obviously, like, you've gone into the bathroom, there's sometimes a sticker on the door to go into the bathroom.
[00:16:47.880 --> 00:16:55.880] On the back of the door, once you're in the bathroom, there were a load of adverts for like printed adverts for like supplement bio-gut supplement things.
[00:16:55.880 --> 00:17:02.840] And then, yeah, you come out and then it's playing a video on a loop with three more adverts just to go to the bathroom.
[00:17:02.840 --> 00:17:03.960] It's ridiculous.
[00:17:03.960 --> 00:17:24.120] But even if all of those screens, the ones, the 14,500 screens that could have been powering 50,000 homes, if all of them were truly using renewable energy rather than buying carbon offset credits or anything scammy like that, they're still wasting those renewable resources that could be better served powering those households or powering hospitals or anywhere else where consumption is essential.
[00:17:24.120 --> 00:17:27.960] What they're actually offsetting is where that renewable energy would go.
[00:17:27.960 --> 00:17:29.720] It would go to somewhere useful.
[00:17:29.720 --> 00:17:31.080] Instead, it's going to them.
[00:17:31.080 --> 00:17:35.720] And the somewhere useful is having to buy energy that is producing CO2.
[00:17:35.720 --> 00:17:43.480] In any sensible world where we took climate change seriously, a very easy win would be to turn off every single one of those superfluous screens of adverts.
[00:17:43.480 --> 00:17:44.360] We do not need them.
[00:17:44.360 --> 00:17:49.120] They're just wasting energy we can't afford to waste and generating CO2 we can't afford to generate.
[00:17:49.440 --> 00:18:16.640] And I think this is a big issue with the whole conversation around energy and climate stuff is we spend an awful lot of time turning people off from the conversation by essentially screaming at everybody for making any error in judgment in anything, you know, oh my god, you fly, oh my god, you, you know, all these things that we do individually that do contribute to the problem or that we could reduce our use of certain things to help the problem somewhat.
[00:18:16.640 --> 00:18:23.040] And so we start shouting, you know, it's very easy to shout at people about the plastic straws or whatever else that could be contributing to the environment.
[00:18:23.040 --> 00:18:29.360] But really it's a drop in the ocean compared to like the big companies who are pumping out a lot of stuff.
[00:18:29.360 --> 00:18:36.400] But also it's turning people off from the conversation and meaning that people are really then resistant to get involved in environment stuff.
[00:18:36.400 --> 00:18:42.560] And it's that involvement that's really important for the lobbying and for public engagement with that issue.
[00:18:42.880 --> 00:18:47.920] And we just need to be putting the blame in the right direction or putting the regulations in the right direction.
[00:18:47.920 --> 00:18:49.600] Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:18:49.600 --> 00:18:50.800] I completely agree.
[00:18:50.800 --> 00:19:00.000] But the thing is to make any of those kind of large-scale changes that would substantially limit our carbon emissions, prevent energy waste, that kind of thing, there has to be political will.
[00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:11.040] And that's always going to be hard when there are well-funded climate change denialist lobby groups like the Global Warming Policy Foundation and the Institute for Economic Affairs, the IEA that does deny the climate crisis.
[00:19:11.040 --> 00:19:14.640] And also while there are politicians who believe they know better than the science.
[00:19:14.640 --> 00:19:17.680] And unfortunately, there are more than a few in that latter group.
[00:19:17.680 --> 00:19:28.160] We actually learned just last week that Bert Bingham, who's a senior reform councillor in Nottinghamshire, he stopped a meeting about their carbon neutral policy to explain climate change is a hoax.
[00:19:28.160 --> 00:19:33.480] And he should know because he's worked in sustainability for 25 years and he knows it's complete nonsense.
[00:19:33.480 --> 00:19:36.920] Is a senior reform councillor one that's in senior school?
[00:19:38.200 --> 00:19:40.120] It is not, unfortunately.
[00:19:40.120 --> 00:19:41.320] Because all the children.
[00:19:41.400 --> 00:19:42.200] Because they're all children.
[00:19:42.200 --> 00:19:43.560] Yeah, no, he is senior in the science.
[00:19:43.960 --> 00:19:45.640] He's old enough to have worked for 25 years.
[00:19:45.880 --> 00:19:47.960] He's not 19, like half the reform councillors.
[00:19:47.960 --> 00:19:48.760] Yeah, exactly.
[00:19:48.760 --> 00:19:52.200] Bingham told the Nottinghamshire Council, these statistics are manipulated.
[00:19:52.200 --> 00:19:53.400] I've followed it over decades.
[00:19:53.400 --> 00:19:54.760] There's lots of science out there.
[00:19:54.760 --> 00:20:01.560] But at the moment, it seems to be, as in a lot of matters with COVID, if you follow the money, you find the science or the pseudoscience.
[00:20:01.560 --> 00:20:06.280] Is that an aside where he's gone, like it is with COVID?
[00:20:06.600 --> 00:20:07.880] It's weird to bring COVID up.
[00:20:08.040 --> 00:20:17.560] It is weird to bring COVID that, unless he terms carbon neutrality and COVID in the same breath of like, oh, these woke policies of vaccinating people and trying to get it.
[00:20:17.720 --> 00:20:18.600] It's DEI, isn't it?
[00:20:18.600 --> 00:20:22.600] COVID and climate, that's DEI as well, because everything's DEI now.
[00:20:22.760 --> 00:20:24.760] Everything they don't like is DEI, exactly, yeah.
[00:20:24.760 --> 00:20:41.960] But Bingham might not want to be so keen to encourage people to follow the money and find the pseudoscience, given that his party, Reform UK, by 2024, had accepted £2.3 million in donations from climate deniers and fossil fuel interest groups, which accounted for 92% of the party's donations.
[00:20:41.960 --> 00:20:44.440] You know, follow the money, find the pseudoscience.
[00:20:44.440 --> 00:20:44.920] Yeah.
[00:20:44.920 --> 00:20:56.600] And that was before the July 2024 election or the May 2025 local elections in which Reform gained five MPs and over 670 local council seats, including Burt Bingham's own seat.
[00:20:56.600 --> 00:21:02.680] It's maybe no surprise then that there's only one in three reform voters that believe in man-made climate change.
[00:21:02.680 --> 00:21:06.920] So, two in-thirds don't believe in man-made climate change for people who voted for reform.
[00:21:06.920 --> 00:21:10.280] So, very clearly, those fossil fuel interest groups got what they paid for.
[00:21:10.280 --> 00:21:12.120] They got what they were looking to try and get.
[00:21:12.120 --> 00:21:28.160] And close behind reform, as the Tories are getting used to beating, the Conservative government has abandoned their climate change targets, claiming that the aim of being net zero by 2050 is arbitrary, not based on science, and the product of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's bias.
[00:21:28.160 --> 00:21:34.160] The IPCC, they are biased, and that's why they've come up with this 2050 carbon-neutral net zero target.
[00:21:34.160 --> 00:21:35.680] So, this is all incredibly depressing.
[00:21:35.680 --> 00:21:56.720] And while Labour Z Miliband has been doing some admirable work in advocating for solutions to climate change, even going far as to tell Parliament that politicians who reject net zero policies are betraying future generations, which I completely agree with, we maybe can't rely on policy changes and mass public movements to cut carbon emissions and prevent an even greater climate disaster.
[00:21:56.720 --> 00:21:58.960] So, what could be done?
[00:21:58.960 --> 00:22:06.800] Well, a couple of episodes ago, I talked about the people who are trying to bust chemtrails by simmering vinegar as a way of fighting against geoengineering.
[00:22:07.200 --> 00:22:12.320] And to be honest, I left out part of the story because I already had quite a lot of story in there.
[00:22:12.320 --> 00:22:23.520] Because while those fears around contrails and the clouds in the sky were classic paranoia, as the old adage goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not allowed to geoengineer you.
[00:22:23.520 --> 00:22:30.080] Because in April of this year, the UK government did actually greenlight small-scale experiments into geoengineering.
[00:22:30.080 --> 00:22:48.400] The Advanced Research and Invention Agency, or ARIA, announced a £56.8 million programme to quote, explore under rigorous oversight whether any climate cooling approaches that have been proposed as potential options to delay or avert climate tipping points could ever be feasible, scalable, and safe.
[00:22:49.040 --> 00:22:53.520] So, the project has five proposed experiments, essentially, outdoors.
[00:22:53.520 --> 00:22:58.640] One of the projects will explore the efficacy of rethickening Arctic sea ice.
[00:22:58.640 --> 00:23:01.320] Okay, which makes some sense because we know that Arctic ice is melting.
[00:23:01.560 --> 00:23:18.040] We know that as ice coverage shrinks, the big white surfaces that would otherwise have been ice reflecting light and heat get replaced with dark watery surfaces that absorb it, which then speeds up the melting of the remaining ice, shrinking it further, feedback loop, raising seawater levels.
[00:23:18.040 --> 00:23:25.160] So, they're talking about what can they do to essentially stop that ice from melting or make sure you can retain the space that ice used to be.
[00:23:25.160 --> 00:23:39.400] And I'm just going to point out right now that I am 90% sure that I raised the possibility of covering the areas of the Arctic Circle that are no longer ice with a reflective surface to mimic the ice that used to be there in the pub at Skeptics in the Pub one time.
[00:23:39.400 --> 00:23:44.600] And everyone in the conversation laughed at me and said it was a ridiculous idea and that I was an idiot and it couldn't possibly work.
[00:23:44.600 --> 00:23:46.920] Well, it was when you came up with it, mate.
[00:23:46.920 --> 00:23:51.400] All I'm saying is, you guys talking out of a slice of a 58 million pound project.
[00:23:51.400 --> 00:23:58.040] I could have had a slice of 57 million if you guys had just listened to my genius ideas for solving climate change.
[00:23:58.280 --> 00:24:09.080] Do you know what happens if you go to a scientist, particularly a scientist with expertise in the area that you think you've come up with a good idea for, and tell them that you've got a good idea for that they haven't thought of?
[00:24:09.400 --> 00:24:10.360] They tell me I'm wrong.
[00:24:10.360 --> 00:24:11.800] They laugh at you and tell you you're wrong.
[00:24:12.440 --> 00:24:15.480] Even if 10 years down the line, they go on and do it themselves.
[00:24:15.480 --> 00:24:16.360] I think it's a good idea.
[00:24:16.360 --> 00:24:23.800] I'm not saying it's a perfect idea, but I think it's not a bad idea because you know what area used to be ice.
[00:24:23.800 --> 00:24:27.480] It's not like you're trying to fuck with the world in ways you're not expecting.
[00:24:27.480 --> 00:24:28.600] You know what used to be ice.
[00:24:28.680 --> 00:24:30.680] You're just trying to stop that shrinking.
[00:24:30.680 --> 00:24:32.680] You're trying to hold it where it is.
[00:24:32.720 --> 00:24:36.200] No, and I'm sure the challenge isn't with that as a concept.
[00:24:36.200 --> 00:24:38.360] The challenge is how do you actually do that?
[00:24:38.360 --> 00:24:38.760] Maybe.
[00:24:38.760 --> 00:24:40.200] Well, we'll come to that.
[00:24:40.200 --> 00:24:45.680] Another of the proposed projects studies how milligram quantities of mineral dusts age in the stratosphere.
[00:24:44.840 --> 00:24:49.120] So you take this dust up into the stratosphere and study how it ages and stuff.
[00:24:49.440 --> 00:24:54.400] But before the chemtrail conspiracy theorists get too panicked by that, those chemicals will never be released.
[00:24:54.400 --> 00:24:56.560] ARIA is not going to release those chemicals.
[00:24:56.560 --> 00:25:02.160] They're just analyzing what happens when they get into the stratosphere, and then they're bringing them back down for analysis themselves.
[00:25:02.160 --> 00:25:04.960] So they're never going to be sprayed out or anything like that.
[00:25:04.960 --> 00:25:16.000] Now, the other projects are more likely to draw the ire of the chemtrail busters because they focus on exploring the effects of seawater spray and electric charges on cloud reflectivity.
[00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:24.080] The idea being that, just like those ice shelves, the presence of clouds can reflect heat from the sun so it doesn't get absorbed by land or water, essentially.
[00:25:24.080 --> 00:25:27.520] So it hits the top of the cloud and kind of goes back up essentially.
[00:25:27.520 --> 00:25:35.440] And if you can make the existing clouds more reflective, either by changing their water composition or running an electric charge through them, you might be able to mitigate some of the warming.
[00:25:35.440 --> 00:25:42.800] Or I think it might work the other way: that the clouds are keeping the heat in, and by making them less reflective, the heat can sort of pass back ashore.
[00:25:42.800 --> 00:25:56.960] This might sound very, very risky, but ARIA do make a point of stating that, quote, these experiments will only go ahead after a period of meaningful public engagement with local communities and will all be subject to oversight by the program's independent oversight committee.
[00:25:56.960 --> 00:26:05.600] And also, that all ARIA-funded experiments will be time-bound, limited in size and scale, and their effects will dissipate within 24 hours or be fully reversible.
[00:26:05.600 --> 00:26:07.520] That is their assurances.
[00:26:07.520 --> 00:26:13.680] As you can imagine, on their website about these projects, they've got quite an extensive FAQ.
[00:26:13.680 --> 00:26:18.960] Where they make it very clear, they say that these experiments don't involve any chemicals that are harmful to humans or animals.
[00:26:18.960 --> 00:26:20.480] They're not going to affect the growing of crops.
[00:26:20.480 --> 00:26:22.160] That's a separate FAQ.
[00:26:22.160 --> 00:26:24.720] They won't change the weather or the seasons.
[00:26:24.720 --> 00:26:30.120] And they are definitely not trying to block out the sun, which is what they've been accused of, and what newspaper reports have even said.
[00:26:30.120 --> 00:26:31.800] They're trying to block out the sun.
[00:26:31.800 --> 00:26:34.040] It's not what they're trying to do.
[00:26:34.360 --> 00:26:42.120] Obviously, that long list of FAQs has done absolutely nothing to reassure anyone who was worried about geoengineering and chemtrails.
[00:26:42.120 --> 00:26:55.880] And as a result, there was a petition that was quickly started on the Parliament petition website titled, Make All Forms of Geoengineering Affecting the Environment Illegal, in which they appealed, quote, We want all forms of geoengineering to be illegal in the UK.
[00:26:55.880 --> 00:26:59.880] We do not want any use of technologies to intervene in the Earth's natural systems.
[00:26:59.880 --> 00:27:04.600] We think there is a potential for this to negatively impact humanity, flora, and fauna in the future.
[00:27:04.600 --> 00:27:08.760] It's been previously said that greenhouse gas removal is essential to meet climate targets.
[00:27:08.760 --> 00:27:14.600] We believe that this and all other forms of geoengineering should be made illegal in the UK.
[00:27:14.600 --> 00:27:22.600] Ironically enough, it's not a stretch to say that what we've done by pumping CO2 into the atmosphere for the last N hundred years is geoengineering.
[00:27:23.160 --> 00:27:24.120] It is not a stretch.
[00:27:24.120 --> 00:27:25.480] That is literally my conclusion.
[00:27:25.480 --> 00:27:25.800] Exactly.
[00:27:25.880 --> 00:27:26.200] There we go.
[00:27:26.280 --> 00:27:27.720] God damn you.
[00:27:28.680 --> 00:27:31.720] But this petition gained 160,000 signatures.
[00:27:31.720 --> 00:27:33.960] It received a response from the government because of that.
[00:27:33.960 --> 00:27:45.160] And the government made it clear that the wider consequences of solar radiation modification, SRM, which is what we're talking about here, are poorly understood with significant uncertainty around the possible risks and impacts of deployment.
[00:27:45.160 --> 00:27:50.520] And as such, the government's position is that it is not deploying SRM and has no plans in place to do so.
[00:27:50.520 --> 00:28:03.160] Now, I don't want to suggest that everyone who's taken issues with this pilot investigation by ARIA comes from the chemtrail-busting vinegar simmering community because opposition and criticism has been far, far broader and way more mainstream and expert than that.
[00:28:03.400 --> 00:28:14.400] So, talking to The Guardian, Mary Church from the Center for International Environmental Law argued that solar engineering is inherently unpredictable and risk-breaking further an already broken climate system.
[00:28:14.400 --> 00:28:23.280] Conducting small-scale experiments risks normalizing highly controversial theories and accelerating technological development, creating a slippery slope towards full-scale deployment.
[00:28:23.280 --> 00:28:32.080] Meanwhile, Professor Raymond Pierre Humbert at the University of Oxford said: solar geoengineering has enormous and troubling implications for global society.
[00:28:32.080 --> 00:28:42.160] The UK funding sets a dangerous precedent for other governments who jump on the bandwagon, and it's the height of folly to open the door to field experiments in the absence of any national or international governance.
[00:28:42.160 --> 00:28:52.320] So, while some of these theories do seem sound, the thing to bear in mind is that the climate is a hugely complicated system, or rather, collection of systems.
[00:28:52.320 --> 00:28:58.800] And so, any change to any bit of it could be wildly unpredictable as to what downstream consequences it could have.
[00:28:58.800 --> 00:29:12.320] According to the BBC, there have been some studies which have demonstrated that solar radiation modification could cause strong warming high above the tropics, changing large-scale weather patterns, warming the polar regions, and altering rainfall patterns across the world.
[00:29:12.320 --> 00:29:24.560] Those studies highlight that the brightening the cloud cover in southwest Africa off the coast of Namibia could end up causing a drought in South America, which in turn could starve the Amazon rainforest, which would be bad.
[00:29:24.560 --> 00:29:32.400] Equally, while it might be we might be able to bring down global average temperatures, that reduction again wouldn't necessarily happen evenly.
[00:29:32.400 --> 00:29:36.240] So, it could result in extreme climate issues in specific areas of the world.
[00:29:36.240 --> 00:29:39.920] It's really complicated, and we simply have no idea what would happen.
[00:29:40.240 --> 00:29:48.280] There are other criticisms as well, notably that spending our time chasing geoengineering solutions could be a huge distraction from the things we know will actually work.
[00:29:48.280 --> 00:29:53.600] Decarbonization, carbon neutrality, reducing emissions, moving on to renewable energy.
[00:29:53.600 --> 00:30:03.880] By introducing a technological Hail Mary, we could essentially be sending the message that it's fine, carry on as you are, because the Boffins are going to come along any minute now and solve it with a magical solution.
[00:30:04.360 --> 00:30:20.840] And it's that that's really tricky, especially when it comes to, I mean, obviously, individual public behavior is one thing, but like when there's money involved and the big companies are like, oh, okay, but it doesn't matter because we can destroy the world now because they're going to fix it, they're going to cure it.
[00:30:20.840 --> 00:30:21.480] Exactly.
[00:30:21.480 --> 00:30:29.160] And then when that technology fails or it doesn't work as well as we expect, it's way too late to take the mitigation action that we actually need.
[00:30:29.480 --> 00:30:36.360] There's a reason that some of the heaviest investors in these technology are from big tech companies and fintech industries.
[00:30:36.360 --> 00:30:45.000] And they've pushed a lot of money, their money into this area, essentially because it means they don't have to tackle their own really significant contributions to the climate crisis.
[00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:55.880] Like, you don't need to turn those big advertising screens off and stop them beaming commercial messaging into unsuspecting eyes if you've got the magical machine that zaps out special clouds to keep the heat under control.
[00:30:55.880 --> 00:31:06.440] Or more cynically, you don't need to turn those screens off or deal with your data centers and your mass wastage if you can tick the green credentials box by saying you're investing in a solution.
[00:31:06.440 --> 00:31:11.960] As long as the cost of funding the research is less than the cost of tidying up your carbon mess, you're in profit there.
[00:31:12.280 --> 00:31:13.800] I think that's what's happening.
[00:31:13.800 --> 00:31:16.680] And for what it's worth, ARIA does actually acknowledge this criticism.
[00:31:16.680 --> 00:31:19.000] From their site, they say, this is quite a long quote.
[00:31:19.000 --> 00:31:25.480] There is no substitute for decarbonization, which is the only sustainable way to lower the chances of such climate tipping points and their effects from occurring.
[00:31:25.480 --> 00:31:30.760] Our current warming trajectory already makes a number of tipping points distinctly possible over the next century.
[00:31:30.760 --> 00:31:35.400] If faced with a climate tipping point, our understanding of the options available remains limited.
[00:31:35.400 --> 00:31:44.520] This knowledge gap has driven increased interest in whether there are approaches known as climate interventions that could actively reduce temperatures globally or regionally over shorter time scales.
[00:31:44.560 --> 00:31:52.800] Yet, in the absence of robust data, we currently have little understanding of whether such interventions are scientifically feasible and what their full range of impacts might be.
[00:31:52.800 --> 00:31:57.760] This program aims to gather such data so that we can better understand these approaches and their potential effects.
[00:31:57.760 --> 00:31:59.360] That's the end of the quote there.
[00:31:59.360 --> 00:32:07.120] So, like, we could point out that ARIA are just running small-scale trials that are time-bound, heavily regulated, going to dissipate within 24 hours.
[00:32:07.120 --> 00:32:09.920] No plan to actually deploy them at all.
[00:32:09.920 --> 00:32:23.600] But if they come back with promising results, what's to stop billionaire narcissistic tech idiots like Elon Musk from spinning up the scheme at scale, safe in the knowledge that he's basically beyond the regulatory powers of any country in the world at this point.
[00:32:23.600 --> 00:32:25.040] He's too big to fail.
[00:32:25.040 --> 00:32:27.280] It's a massive, massive risk.
[00:32:27.280 --> 00:32:30.560] And ultimately, I don't know how I feel about all of this.
[00:32:30.560 --> 00:32:35.360] So, what I know for certain is that we absolutely cannot and should not rely on these kind of tech solutions.
[00:32:35.360 --> 00:32:45.600] Not solar radiation modification, not carbon capture and storage, not even mass tree planting schemes, because those often end up generating more carbon than they save.
[00:32:45.600 --> 00:32:53.520] Because we had an article on the skeptic about it: while it seems like trees eat carbon, great, they only become a carbon sink once they're past a certain age.
[00:32:53.520 --> 00:33:02.240] And if they don't get past a certain age because you've planted them in the wrong place, you haven't tended to them, all you've done is bury something that's going to emit carbon when it decays.
[00:33:02.240 --> 00:33:06.880] And also, you have to get these sapling trees to the place and you drive them there emitting carbon.
[00:33:06.880 --> 00:33:12.400] So, you can spend a lot of carbon putting in trees that never mature to the point where they become a carbon sink.
[00:33:12.400 --> 00:33:19.920] And you've ticked the box of we've done an amazing carbon thing, we're carbon neutral, we're doing an amazing tree planting scheme, and what you've actually done is made everything worse.
[00:33:19.920 --> 00:33:23.200] So, these solutions aren't going to be the perfect solution here.
[00:33:23.200 --> 00:33:29.760] Our solution has to be reduce emissions and push for policies that promote carbon neutrality and promote renewables.
[00:33:29.880 --> 00:33:41.000] The idea of seeding the atmosphere with large amounts of chemicals that shouldn't be there, that are going to change the global temperatures and weather systems in ways that we can't predict or control, is obviously folly.
[00:33:41.000 --> 00:33:48.040] But as you say, Mike, that is precisely what we are doing and we have been doing for over a century with out-of-control carbon emissions.
[00:33:48.040 --> 00:33:48.280] Yes.
[00:33:48.280 --> 00:33:55.800] We're throwing carbon into the sky with no idea when we started, no idea what kind of effect it would have, and no plan to save it.
[00:33:55.800 --> 00:33:58.680] Climate change is the result of geoengineering.
[00:33:58.680 --> 00:34:06.520] But rather than a small-scale trial, it was a massive experiment we've ran with no controls, no oversight, and no plan to arrest it.
[00:34:06.520 --> 00:34:11.000] Those tipping points that Arya talked about and that everyone else has talked about, they're coming.
[00:34:11.000 --> 00:34:13.320] The extreme temperatures we're seeing are evidence of that.
[00:34:13.320 --> 00:34:15.880] The extreme floods in Texas are evidence of that.
[00:34:15.880 --> 00:34:17.560] They may already be here.
[00:34:17.560 --> 00:34:18.840] We can't afford to be complacent.
[00:34:18.840 --> 00:34:33.480] We can't afford to let the likes of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the Institute for Economic Affairs, and the other wealthy fossil fuel interest groups, nor the politicians they've bought and paid for, dissuade us from taking the kind of radical action we need to avert this crisis.
[00:34:33.480 --> 00:34:43.160] And if we don't, unfortunately, there may come a time where the potential benefits of those risky geoengineering experiments are far safer than continuing inaction.
[00:34:43.160 --> 00:34:46.120] And let's just hope we never get to that point.
[00:34:49.640 --> 00:34:51.240] So, I was in the flat the other day.
[00:34:51.240 --> 00:34:54.600] Okay, in my beautifully air-conditioned flat.
[00:34:54.760 --> 00:34:55.400] Part of the problem.
[00:34:55.640 --> 00:35:02.280] It did occur to me, actually, lying in the flat the other day, where it's so hot because we've been burning stuff into the sky.
[00:35:02.280 --> 00:35:08.120] And my solution to that is to burn more stuff into the sky to cool myself down because of how much stuff we burned into the sky.
[00:35:08.120 --> 00:35:11.160] It did literally occur to me as I lay there panting.
[00:35:11.160 --> 00:35:19.040] Get solar panels on your other house, and then your excess energy, you'll export to the grid, and it will cover the energy you're spending on your aircon at your flat.
[00:35:19.360 --> 00:35:24.000] But I was at the flat the other day, and there was a knock on the door, and that's unusual because it's a flat.
[00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:25.760] Yeah, yeah, you have a buzzer, you've got a bell.
[00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:34.720] Normally, you get a buzzer and a bell, but this was somebody actually knocking on somebody who has come into the building on all the flights of stairs to get to your knock on the door.
[00:35:34.720 --> 00:35:36.160] And we've got a doorbell outside.
[00:35:36.160 --> 00:35:42.000] There's a little ding-dong kind of push-button doorbell, which is weird because it looks like a light switch, but it's a doorbell.
[00:35:42.000 --> 00:35:42.640] Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:35:42.960 --> 00:35:44.080] And they rang that.
[00:35:44.080 --> 00:35:46.880] And so Katie had just got out of the shower.
[00:35:46.880 --> 00:35:49.200] And so she said, You have to get the door.
[00:35:49.200 --> 00:35:50.560] And I was like, Well, why the fuck do I have to?
[00:35:50.640 --> 00:35:51.840] She goes, Because I'm fucking naked.
[00:35:51.840 --> 00:35:52.640] I just got out of the shower.
[00:35:52.880 --> 00:35:53.760] That's very obvious.
[00:35:53.760 --> 00:35:55.520] But I don't like people.
[00:35:55.520 --> 00:35:58.400] So it's, you know, swings and roundabouts, innit?
[00:35:58.560 --> 00:36:01.200] Katie may not like strangers seeing her naked.
[00:36:01.600 --> 00:36:02.320] Which is reasonable.
[00:36:02.320 --> 00:36:02.880] It's reasonable.
[00:36:02.880 --> 00:36:03.760] So I thought, oh, fuck it.
[00:36:03.760 --> 00:36:04.240] I need to get up.
[00:36:04.320 --> 00:36:05.360] So I stood up.
[00:36:05.360 --> 00:36:11.040] And then the polite ding-dong on the door became thud, thud, thud, very hard on the door.
[00:36:11.200 --> 00:36:11.920] Police red.
[00:36:11.920 --> 00:36:13.440] And I thought, fucking hell, what's going on?
[00:36:13.440 --> 00:36:14.480] They've come for your aircon.
[00:36:14.720 --> 00:36:18.800] So I'm wandering down the stairs going, all right, keep fucking out of a fucking bastard.
[00:36:19.280 --> 00:36:21.600] When you're looking, I'm answering the fucking door at all.
[00:36:21.600 --> 00:36:22.480] Open the door.
[00:36:22.480 --> 00:36:24.160] It was the police.
[00:36:24.160 --> 00:36:25.920] Two police officers stood there.
[00:36:25.920 --> 00:36:30.000] And I thought, all right, they said this, you know, they've come for me with that time.
[00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:31.040] I killed a man.
[00:36:31.360 --> 00:36:34.320] I may as well slap the cuffs on now and take me away.
[00:36:34.320 --> 00:36:38.720] Two police officers there, and they said, Do you know anyone who lives in these flats?
[00:36:38.720 --> 00:36:41.680] And enumerated like four flats on my landing.
[00:36:41.680 --> 00:36:44.560] And I was like, I mean, I don't.
[00:36:45.120 --> 00:36:46.240] My wife might.
[00:36:46.240 --> 00:36:46.880] She talks to people.
[00:36:47.120 --> 00:36:47.680] She talks to people.
[00:36:47.920 --> 00:36:48.880] I fucking don't.
[00:36:48.880 --> 00:36:50.480] And they said, is your wife in?
[00:36:50.480 --> 00:36:51.920] And I said, yeah, I'll go.
[00:36:51.920 --> 00:36:53.280] Do you want to come in for a second?
[00:36:53.280 --> 00:36:57.360] So the police came in, and I went upstairs and said to Katie, she said, Who's here?
[00:36:57.360 --> 00:36:59.120] And I said, it's the NACS.
[00:36:59.120 --> 00:37:00.040] It's the Fuzz.
[00:37:00.360 --> 00:37:01.240] The pigs are here.
[00:37:01.560 --> 00:37:02.840] Can you smell bacon?
[00:37:02.840 --> 00:37:04.360] Because I can smell bacon.
[00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:06.360] It is, you know, the Rosas are here.
[00:37:06.680 --> 00:37:07.800] It's the Popo.
[00:37:07.800 --> 00:37:09.000] It's the filth.
[00:37:09.000 --> 00:37:09.560] It's the.
[00:37:09.880 --> 00:37:11.000] I didn't say any of that.
[00:37:11.000 --> 00:37:13.640] I thought all of those things and I said, it's the police.
[00:37:13.640 --> 00:37:14.680] I would like a word.
[00:37:14.680 --> 00:37:17.080] And she misinterpreted that as they want a specific word with her.
[00:37:17.080 --> 00:37:19.960] And it's just like, no, you speak to other people and I don't.
[00:37:20.440 --> 00:37:24.440] And so she quickly got dressed and went downstairs to speak to the police.
[00:37:24.440 --> 00:37:26.600] And they said, Do you speak to any of these flats?
[00:37:26.600 --> 00:37:32.920] She said, No, we speak to people in like the flats down that side of the corridor, but not really down that side of the corridor.
[00:37:32.920 --> 00:37:37.400] And they said, Have you ever heard anyone say that they have a firearm?
[00:37:37.400 --> 00:37:42.360] Could even just be a BB gun, just but any kind of firearm was said, no, not heard anything along those lines.
[00:37:42.360 --> 00:38:01.320] And then they said, Someone at the hotel across from the flat took this picture, and it was someone who'd put a rifle on the windowsill of like a big, long, like kind of hunting-style rifle on the windowsill in one of the flats that goes along the front of the building.
[00:38:01.320 --> 00:38:05.720] And so we looked at that and said, Fucking hell, no, no, we're not seeing anything like that.
[00:38:05.720 --> 00:38:09.640] And they said they've taken a photograph of this and they've reported it to us, and we just need to try and find out.
[00:38:09.720 --> 00:38:11.880] We've knocked on those flats, and there's no answer there.
[00:38:11.880 --> 00:38:15.560] We don't know specifically which one it was because all we have is the photograph.
[00:38:15.880 --> 00:38:17.960] And so we're like, fucking hell, what can we do?
[00:38:17.960 --> 00:38:24.840] And then I suddenly thought I had just got the Merseyside Skeptic's flag out for the picnic.
[00:38:25.080 --> 00:38:26.200] I'd just dug that out.
[00:38:26.520 --> 00:38:30.520] And that comes in a long, kind of rifle-length canvas case.
[00:38:30.520 --> 00:38:31.160] Right.
[00:38:31.160 --> 00:38:33.400] And was propped up against the wall.
[00:38:33.400 --> 00:38:35.240] But it wouldn't look like a rifle, would it?
[00:38:35.240 --> 00:38:40.280] It does in its case, especially if you hold it in a rifly way.
[00:38:41.240 --> 00:38:42.440] But that's not what it was.
[00:38:42.440 --> 00:38:42.840] Oh, okay.
[00:38:42.840 --> 00:38:43.000] Okay.
[00:38:43.400 --> 00:38:44.200] It wasn't that.
[00:38:44.200 --> 00:38:44.440] Right.
[00:38:44.520 --> 00:38:46.960] But it just looked really, really bad.
[00:38:46.960 --> 00:38:49.520] But the police are standing there, and I've got this rifle shape.
[00:38:44.840 --> 00:38:50.480] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:38:50.560 --> 00:38:53.280] I thought you were saying for a second that the hotel had mistaken the flag.
[00:38:53.840 --> 00:38:56.000] There's no way they would have like, oh, there's a case there.
[00:38:56.000 --> 00:38:56.640] It must be a rifle.
[00:38:56.800 --> 00:38:57.440] It must be a rifle.
[00:38:58.160 --> 00:38:59.520] It was legitimately a rifle.
[00:38:59.520 --> 00:39:01.920] So I'm thinking, shit, what if the police see?
[00:39:02.080 --> 00:39:05.680] And then I had visions of them saying, you get down on the floor now.
[00:39:05.680 --> 00:39:06.320] And they're pointing at.
[00:39:06.400 --> 00:39:07.280] They didn't have guns.
[00:39:07.280 --> 00:39:12.480] But in my weird fantasy, they've pointed guns at me and now I'm on the floor in handcuffs.
[00:39:12.720 --> 00:39:17.600] And at that point in your brain, did you think, oh, by the way, if you're thinking it's that, that's just a flag.
[00:39:17.680 --> 00:39:18.480] That's just a flag.
[00:39:18.480 --> 00:39:19.360] I can't show you if you need it.
[00:39:19.440 --> 00:39:20.400] It's not a rifle.
[00:39:20.400 --> 00:39:25.120] But then they wouldn't let me show them that it's a flag because they'd say, he's going for the gun.
[00:39:25.120 --> 00:39:26.400] And then I'd get shot.
[00:39:26.400 --> 00:39:27.680] You could ask them to go and have a look.
[00:39:27.680 --> 00:39:29.520] If you worry about that, you can go and have a look.
[00:39:29.520 --> 00:39:31.840] And then his mate would be like, he's going for the gun.
[00:39:31.840 --> 00:39:33.360] And they'd just be shooting at each other.
[00:39:33.360 --> 00:39:35.760] And it would be booby-trapped, clearly.
[00:39:36.080 --> 00:39:41.760] And we ended up, we took them out onto the balcony to see if we could see the flat, but we couldn't because it was around the corner.
[00:39:41.760 --> 00:39:44.320] And we ended up putting them and said, go and talk to the caretaker.
[00:39:44.320 --> 00:39:45.600] It's nothing to do with us.
[00:39:45.600 --> 00:39:46.640] And we helped the police out.
[00:39:46.640 --> 00:39:48.160] But yeah, it's a fucking gun.
[00:39:48.560 --> 00:39:50.240] Somewhere in my flat, there's a gun.
[00:39:50.240 --> 00:39:52.960] It wasn't mine, but I nearly got shot in my head.
[00:39:52.960 --> 00:39:57.040] I nearly got shot for holding a flag and having a gun.
[00:39:57.440 --> 00:39:58.880] It was a weird afternoon.
[00:39:58.880 --> 00:40:00.800] And there's no information on that.
[00:40:00.960 --> 00:40:02.080] We've not heard from it since.
[00:40:02.080 --> 00:40:02.560] We don't know.
[00:40:02.560 --> 00:40:03.600] Was it a BB gun?
[00:40:03.600 --> 00:40:04.400] Was it a rifle?
[00:40:04.400 --> 00:40:05.680] Was it a drug dealer?
[00:40:05.680 --> 00:40:08.800] Sometimes the corridor smells of weed, but I think that's the case in every flat.
[00:40:08.960 --> 00:40:09.440] It's not every flat.
[00:40:09.760 --> 00:40:12.640] Just anywhere in Liverpool, on any given day.
[00:40:13.680 --> 00:40:15.760] You can smell weed at some point.
[00:40:16.400 --> 00:40:19.360] But yeah, so you know, avoid my flat.
[00:40:19.360 --> 00:40:20.960] There's definitely firearms.
[00:40:21.280 --> 00:40:24.160] Firearms involved somewhere or possibly a flag.
[00:40:24.480 --> 00:40:28.880] Arguably, the best place to be is your flat because he's going to be shooting out from there.
[00:40:28.880 --> 00:40:29.560] That's true.
[00:40:29.360 --> 00:40:32.520] Yeah, it's going to be past your flat.
[00:40:29.520 --> 00:40:33.240] Yeah, yeah.
[00:40:37.640 --> 00:40:39.960] So tickets for QED have sold out.
[00:40:39.960 --> 00:40:42.040] They have fully sold out.
[00:40:42.040 --> 00:40:47.480] We have sold the last ticket for the last QED, which when that happened, I actually had a little cry about.
[00:40:47.480 --> 00:40:48.040] Did you?
[00:40:48.040 --> 00:40:53.000] I didn't expect to, but it just suddenly dawned on me that's the last ticket for the last QED, and I had a little blub about it.
[00:40:53.160 --> 00:40:54.280] The last in-person ticket.
[00:40:54.280 --> 00:40:57.080] We are selling streaming tickets here.
[00:40:57.240 --> 00:40:58.680] So there's streaming tickets available.
[00:40:58.680 --> 00:41:00.520] There are as many streaming tickets as you would like.
[00:41:00.520 --> 00:41:01.240] Buy a couple.
[00:41:01.240 --> 00:41:01.720] Buy a couple.
[00:41:01.960 --> 00:41:02.520] Why not?
[00:41:02.680 --> 00:41:03.560] We know of someone who has.
[00:41:03.560 --> 00:41:09.720] We know someone who's having a watch party slash sleepover and they're having people around and they've each bought a ticket because they want us bought us.
[00:41:09.720 --> 00:41:12.040] So they're not doing the thing of like, oh, come around and all watch my stream.
[00:41:12.280 --> 00:41:13.560] They've all bought streaming tickets.
[00:41:13.560 --> 00:41:14.120] That's good.
[00:41:14.120 --> 00:41:14.920] So they say.
[00:41:14.920 --> 00:41:15.480] No, they have.
[00:41:16.680 --> 00:41:17.640] I believe them.
[00:41:17.960 --> 00:41:19.800] So two points to make on that.
[00:41:19.800 --> 00:41:21.560] One is there is a waiting list.
[00:41:21.560 --> 00:41:27.080] So if some people return their tickets, we will go to the waiting list and give on a first come, first served basis.
[00:41:27.080 --> 00:41:30.920] So if you want to join the waiting list, tickets at qdcon.org is the way to get onto the waiting list.
[00:41:31.000 --> 00:41:38.520] And if the hotel randomly tell us that they've renovated and have found an extra massive space in their hotel, we might be able to sell some more tickets.
[00:41:38.520 --> 00:41:40.920] But other than that, we are limited by the size of the hotel.
[00:41:40.920 --> 00:41:45.080] So yes, tickets at qdcon.org if you want to join the waiting list to find out if there is tickets.
[00:41:45.080 --> 00:41:47.000] There's quite a few people on that waiting list already.
[00:41:47.000 --> 00:41:50.600] So get on there while you can because it will be in first come, first served order.
[00:41:50.600 --> 00:41:57.800] And if you don't want to join the waiting list or you're not in a position to be able to come to QBD in person, you can buy an online ticket.
[00:41:57.800 --> 00:42:02.360] They are £49 and they are available from the QD website, which is QDCon.org.
[00:42:02.360 --> 00:42:05.960] The only place you can get QEDCon tickets is at the QED website.
[00:42:06.360 --> 00:42:11.160] Not from those people who'd like send a tweet as soon as you say anything is sold out anywhere on Twitter.
[00:42:11.160 --> 00:42:11.800] Yeah, exactly.
[00:42:11.960 --> 00:42:15.680] But they won't be able to resell you theirs for a marked up price.
[00:42:14.840 --> 00:42:21.360] And the online streaming tickets, they will get you the main stage, they will get you the podcast room, every live podcast that you'll be able to see there.
[00:42:21.760 --> 00:42:22.800] And they'll also get you the panel.
[00:42:22.880 --> 00:42:23.840] And the panel room as well.
[00:42:23.840 --> 00:42:24.400] Yeah.
[00:42:24.400 --> 00:42:26.960] We've also announced some new guests for QED.
[00:42:26.960 --> 00:42:28.400] Should we do Matthew Sweet first?
[00:42:28.400 --> 00:42:32.720] So Matthew Sweet is a writer and a broadcaster.
[00:42:32.720 --> 00:42:34.560] I've been on his BBC radio show.
[00:42:34.560 --> 00:42:42.480] He's got a show called Free Thinking, which is a really interesting show where he gets on science communicators and people with all sorts of interesting backgrounds and brings them together around a fairly loose theme.
[00:42:42.480 --> 00:42:44.640] And it's a really fun kind of show.
[00:42:44.640 --> 00:42:47.520] But he also has spent a lot of time-I mean, he's done lots and lots of things.
[00:42:47.520 --> 00:42:49.600] He's written a series with Mark Gatis.
[00:42:49.600 --> 00:42:52.800] Yeah, that looks pretty good.
[00:42:52.800 --> 00:43:02.720] He's also spends a lot of time watching the kind of conspiracy theory events that we watch, and he watches things on GB News and points out what that's doing in broadcasting.
[00:43:02.720 --> 00:43:07.520] So he's got the kinds of interests in the conspiracy areas that we're talking about.
[00:43:07.520 --> 00:43:18.240] And I think his background as a kind of historian, as a broadcaster, someone who's in the media, I think will have a really interesting perspective on that side of the weird world of Wu.
[00:43:18.560 --> 00:43:27.440] He also very famously called out Naomi Wolf for her book where she claimed that gay men in Victorian England were being executed left, right, and centre.
[00:43:27.440 --> 00:43:32.240] Yes, it was on his show that he brought up that you just misread the source material.
[00:43:32.640 --> 00:43:36.000] Yeah, so he's kind of right in the sweet spot for us, basically.
[00:43:36.000 --> 00:43:40.800] And he is a regular contributor to the Doctor Who Blu-ray collection, which I'm very happy about.
[00:43:41.040 --> 00:43:42.960] He interviews people on that all the time.
[00:43:42.960 --> 00:43:44.320] So I'm excited for that.
[00:43:44.320 --> 00:43:46.560] He writes Doctor Who as well, which is which is great.
[00:43:46.560 --> 00:43:47.760] He writes Doctor Who for Big Finish.
[00:43:47.760 --> 00:43:49.360] Big Doctor Who found Matthew Sweet.
[00:43:49.360 --> 00:43:51.840] That was my secret plan in getting us to invite him.
[00:43:52.160 --> 00:43:57.080] I did wonder why every now and then you were just like, oh, should we invite him to invite Matthew Sweet?
[00:43:57.280 --> 00:43:59.200] I was also very excited about Matthew Shoefoo.
[00:43:59.680 --> 00:44:07.000] You recommended him and put him on the list and stuff, but then every it was Mike that kept bringing him back occasionally subtly.
[00:44:07.160 --> 00:44:13.240] And I was like, Well, I know Marsh recommends him as a speaker, but Mike's the one who just keeps randomly bringing up Marsh's recommendation.
[00:44:13.240 --> 00:44:19.480] Yeah, Matthew Sweet did an interview with Michael Grade for the Doctor Who Blu-ray collection.
[00:44:19.480 --> 00:44:19.720] Okay.
[00:44:19.720 --> 00:44:23.080] And Michael Grade was the guy who in the mid-80s cancelled Doctor Who.
[00:44:23.080 --> 00:44:26.920] Ah, and that resulted in a big backlash and a Save Doctor Who campaign.
[00:44:26.920 --> 00:44:32.360] And eventually the BBC relented and brought the show back, and it limped on for another three or four years.
[00:44:32.360 --> 00:44:37.160] But during that interview, Michael Grade is absolutely convinced that he cancelled Doctor Who.
[00:44:37.160 --> 00:44:40.360] And Matthew Sweet is going, You didn't.
[00:44:40.360 --> 00:44:42.040] It carried on for several years.
[00:44:42.040 --> 00:44:46.600] In fact, you'd left the BBC by the time the show actually finished.
[00:44:46.600 --> 00:44:47.000] Oh, wow.
[00:44:47.000 --> 00:44:48.840] And Michael Grade was like, well, no, it stopped.
[00:44:48.840 --> 00:44:50.600] I told him to stop it, and it stopped.
[00:44:50.600 --> 00:45:06.040] And it's a weird moment in that interview where Matthew Sweet kind of realizes he doesn't know that the program carried on for four years after he insisted that it's even well, it might have done one more because the funding was already committed, but it stopped.
[00:45:06.040 --> 00:45:06.760] It fucking didn't.
[00:45:07.000 --> 00:45:08.120] Might say not.
[00:45:08.760 --> 00:45:09.800] But there we go.
[00:45:09.800 --> 00:45:11.000] So that's Matthew Sweet.
[00:45:11.160 --> 00:45:12.280] That's going to be brilliant.
[00:45:12.280 --> 00:45:16.040] The next person that we've got to announce is Sean Norris.
[00:45:16.040 --> 00:45:20.680] Yes, Sean is an investigative journalist, a writer who's written for lots and lots of different newspapers.
[00:45:20.680 --> 00:45:25.720] She's got a book all about the far-right attack on bodies and women's bodies in particular.
[00:45:25.720 --> 00:45:26.040] Yes.
[00:45:26.040 --> 00:45:29.160] And so that I think is going to be a really interesting area to talk about.
[00:45:29.160 --> 00:45:30.120] It's so, so relevant.
[00:45:30.120 --> 00:45:32.200] We cover these kind of things on this show all the time, Alice.
[00:45:32.200 --> 00:45:35.080] You bring these kind of stories to us an awful lot.
[00:45:35.160 --> 00:45:37.800] So I think she's going to be a really, really interesting speaker.
[00:45:37.800 --> 00:45:40.920] I realized that we were looking for someone to cover that kind of topic.
[00:45:40.920 --> 00:45:45.120] And we came across her work because of the book and because of other kind of things she wrote.
[00:45:45.120 --> 00:45:46.240] And then we booked her.
[00:45:46.240 --> 00:45:48.480] And then I went to try and write up the announcement.
[00:45:48.480 --> 00:45:49.280] And I googled her.
[00:45:49.360 --> 00:45:51.120] I was like, oh, I followed her on Twitter for years.
[00:45:44.680 --> 00:45:52.160] I recognize her Twitter handle.
[00:45:52.240 --> 00:45:53.440] I know exactly who that is.
[00:45:53.440 --> 00:45:56.080] I just didn't put the two together until we actually booked her for QED.
[00:45:56.080 --> 00:45:57.440] She's going to be absolutely excellent.
[00:45:57.440 --> 00:45:58.080] Yeah.
[00:45:58.400 --> 00:46:00.160] That's going to be very exciting.
[00:46:00.160 --> 00:46:05.600] The other thing about QED is a lot of conferences do CFP to try and get people in.
[00:46:05.600 --> 00:46:07.920] They do what they refer to as the call for papers.
[00:46:07.920 --> 00:46:10.320] So where you pitch a talk to the conference.
[00:46:10.320 --> 00:46:11.840] And QED doesn't do that.
[00:46:11.840 --> 00:46:16.800] QED, generally speaking, we invite you to come and do QED because we think something's interesting.
[00:46:16.800 --> 00:46:23.200] In fact, we have a kind of informal rule of if you ask to speak to QED, then no, you cannot speak to QD.
[00:46:23.680 --> 00:46:24.000] Yeah, yeah.
[00:46:24.960 --> 00:46:26.400] That is a breakable rule.
[00:46:26.400 --> 00:46:29.680] And there are people who would be accepted to that.
[00:46:29.680 --> 00:46:35.440] But we do, it rings a tiny little alarm bell that we want to be able to.
[00:46:35.680 --> 00:46:37.840] If you're seeking the platform, you probably shouldn't have a public.
[00:46:38.000 --> 00:46:40.640] Especially if you haven't spoken for us before.
[00:46:40.880 --> 00:46:41.440] That's the key.
[00:46:41.920 --> 00:46:46.400] If we've never seen you speak and you say, I should do a thing for you, it's like, okay, you probably shouldn't.
[00:46:47.200 --> 00:46:50.240] But this speaker is a speaker we know very, very well on their speaker.
[00:46:50.480 --> 00:46:55.760] We did flex that rule a little bit for the next speaker who approached us and said, I've got this great idea for a talk.
[00:46:55.760 --> 00:46:57.120] And that is Paul Zennon.
[00:46:57.120 --> 00:46:59.760] Yeah, so Paul Zennon, Paul's done so many things for us at QED.
[00:46:59.760 --> 00:47:09.040] He's been the MC, he's been in our intro videos, he's done a talk about psychics, he's done our cabaret evening on a couple of times, he's been on panels about magic and ethics and stuff.
[00:47:09.040 --> 00:47:11.040] And Paul came to us saying, it's the last one.
[00:47:11.280 --> 00:47:12.240] I love QED.
[00:47:12.240 --> 00:47:21.080] I don't suppose you'd be interested in this show I've done for Edinburgh, which I knew he'd done it for Edinburgh, and it never crossed our mind that it'd be absolutely perfect and really cool for QED.
[00:47:21.080 --> 00:47:32.440] Where he's going to be looking at essentially the weird adverts you got advertised at the back of vintage American Comics for things like x-ray specs and sea monkeys and all those kind of oddities.
[00:47:29.680 --> 00:47:32.520] Yeah.
[00:47:32.680 --> 00:47:34.040] And where do those ads come from?
[00:47:34.040 --> 00:47:35.320] What actually are those products?
[00:47:35.400 --> 00:47:36.920] What's the history to them?
[00:47:36.920 --> 00:47:41.080] And he said it's like a science-laced nostalgia kind of story that he's telling.
[00:47:41.240 --> 00:47:43.720] It did really well at the Edinburgh Festival, and he's going to be doing that for us.
[00:47:43.720 --> 00:47:48.440] And I think it'd be a really interesting, a subject we'd never think to put on the main stage.
[00:47:48.440 --> 00:47:54.680] But I bet there are so many people in our audience who know those ads inside out, who find that kind of stuff absolutely fascinating.
[00:47:54.760 --> 00:47:55.800] Would love to know the history of it.
[00:47:55.800 --> 00:47:57.560] And I explained this to Noah when I was talking to you today.
[00:47:57.560 --> 00:47:58.920] He's like, oh my God, that sounds amazing.
[00:47:58.920 --> 00:48:00.440] So yeah, really excited about that.
[00:48:00.440 --> 00:48:02.200] So that's going to be fantastic.
[00:48:02.200 --> 00:48:06.680] So if you would like to come along to QED, you can buy an online ticket at qdcon.org.
[00:48:06.680 --> 00:48:07.800] They are £49.
[00:48:07.960 --> 00:48:11.800] You can join the waiting list for in-person tickets at tickets at qdcon.org.
[00:48:11.800 --> 00:48:19.000] If you buy an online ticket and join the waiting list and you subsequently get an in-person ticket, we will refund your online ticket.
[00:48:19.080 --> 00:48:19.320] Yes.
[00:48:19.640 --> 00:48:23.480] So that's not something that you need to worry about of trying to hedge your bets there.
[00:48:23.480 --> 00:48:24.760] It's totally fine to do that.
[00:48:24.760 --> 00:48:27.400] We'll sort that out and we'll make sure that you're taken care of.
[00:48:28.040 --> 00:48:30.040] So yeah, you should definitely come along to that.
[00:48:30.040 --> 00:48:31.480] Alice, you're doing a talk.
[00:48:31.480 --> 00:48:31.800] I am.
[00:48:31.800 --> 00:48:36.120] I'm doing a talk on Monday, Monday the 21st in Sheffield.
[00:48:36.120 --> 00:48:38.920] It's been a while since I spoke at Sheffield Skeptics, but I'm really looking forward to it.
[00:48:39.000 --> 00:48:40.120] I really like Sheffield Skeptics.
[00:48:40.200 --> 00:48:41.240] I love Sheffield City.
[00:48:41.400 --> 00:48:42.600] They're a lovely group.
[00:48:42.600 --> 00:48:48.680] So, yes, I'm doing my women and wellness empowerment versus exploitation talk.
[00:48:49.320 --> 00:48:50.440] So that will be very funny.
[00:48:50.600 --> 00:48:52.520] And you'll know it more to heart than you.
[00:48:53.480 --> 00:48:56.760] Well, I've got you've never done that talk the same way twice, though, Alice.
[00:48:56.920 --> 00:48:57.800] You fuck with it every time.
[00:48:57.960 --> 00:49:00.280] I fuck with it every time, and I'm genuinely.
[00:49:00.280 --> 00:49:04.920] I may not have time to fuck with it for this time because I'm incredibly busy with work at the minute.
[00:49:04.920 --> 00:49:08.600] But my intent, I've got a different angle that I want to spin into it.
[00:49:08.600 --> 00:49:12.120] So I may, it may be slightly reworked by Monday.
[00:49:12.120 --> 00:49:16.960] If not, it will definitely be reworked by the time I next give it, which is later in the year.
[00:49:16.960 --> 00:49:25.120] But that's, yeah, that's at Sheffield Skeptics in the Pub, which is at the Farm Road Sports and Social Club and is at 7:30pm on this coming Monday.
[00:49:25.120 --> 00:49:29.120] Yeah, and if you just Google Sheffield Skeptics, you will find all about that talk, I'm sure.
[00:49:29.120 --> 00:49:31.200] Aside from that, then I think that is all we have time for.
[00:49:31.200 --> 00:49:32.160] I think it probably is.
[00:49:32.160 --> 00:49:34.960] All that remains then is for me to thank Marsh for coming along today.
[00:49:34.960 --> 00:49:35.600] Cheers.
[00:49:35.600 --> 00:49:36.720] Thank you to Alice.
[00:49:36.720 --> 00:49:37.360] Thank you.
[00:49:37.360 --> 00:49:38.880] We have been Skeptics with a K.
[00:49:38.880 --> 00:49:40.000] We will see you next time.
[00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:40.560] Bye now.
[00:49:40.560 --> 00:49:41.280] Bye.
[00:49:46.080 --> 00:49:51.120] Skeptics with a K is produced by Skeptic Media in association with the Merseyside Skeptic Society.
[00:49:51.120 --> 00:50:00.160] For questions or comments, email podcast at skepticswithakay.org and you can find out more about Merseyside Skeptics at merseyside skeptics.org.uk.