Nathan Myhrvold

0:00 Humans are not Great. Yeah. long term things, okay? So. Um

0:08 We all know that we should Eat right. And work out. Lots of us don't. And

0:16 That's because the immediate gratification of oh Yeah. I'm late for an interview this morning. I I I gotta leave. I I don't have time to work out. That was me this morning. Or

0:27 Wow. That donut looks really great, or there's an extra slice of pizza left. Mean we are such suckers for that? It's ridiculous. Which is why the

0:37 If you take the standards of the past. The average American is overweight. Yeah. What does it mean to be over if it's the average, if it's the majority? Yeah, it's a weird thing. That's why we do a variety of self destructive behaviour individually.

0:54 There's a society. We try to plan ahead a little more and for some things we're able to do that. But If you take a problem like climate change It's Like the worst case.

1:05 Uh situation. Welcome to the Knowledge Project. I'm your host. Shane Parish. This podcast is about mastering the best of what other people have already figured out so you can apply their insights to your life. If you're listening to this, you're missing out. If you'd like access to the podcast before public release, special episodes that don't appear anywhere else, hand edited transcripts including my personal highlights from the conversation. Or you just want to support the show you love.

1:46 You can join at fs.blog slash membership. You can check out the show notes for a link. Today my guest is Nathan Mervold. He's the co-founder of Intellectual Ventures and the former CTO of Microsoft. Throughout his career, he's amassed numerous patents ranging from inventions that use light for trimming hair to technology that helps create artificial blood vessels. He's also the author of Modernist Cuisine, a book that applies scientific principles to making food.

2:14 I wanted to talk to Nathan because he might just be the most interesting person in the world. Not only does he have a unique way of seeing the world, but he's got the resources to put his ideas to the test. In this conversation, we discuss the principles he's used at Microsoft to make decisions, the flaws of autonomous driving. What we've gotten wrong about protecting our world, the science of geoengineering Lessons he wished he'd learned sooner, and so much more. It's time to listen.

2:42 And learn. to start with your postdoc. You work for Stephen Hawking. I did. How did you end up? Working. Within Well, that wasn't a surprise in a sense. I mean I was a

3:07 Graduate student in physics. I got my PhD at Princeton. uh the kind of physics that I was interested in is the kind that Stephen does. It was About quantum theories of space and time. So

3:20 Uh I applied to a number of places for post stock and that was my top choice and he said yes. So that's how I got there. And then where did you go after that? Um, after that I wound up taking leave of absence from that position. I was supposed to be there for a couple of years and I was there for uh one year.

3:39 Leave absence. To work on a project I started in graduate school with some friends. And that project turned into a software company. And I became the CEO of the company. And uh

3:53 Then uh Microsoft bought the company and I was at Microsoft Many many years later I retired from Microsoft, and when that was announced I got an email the next day from Steven saying shall we clear out the office? Are you coming back? 'Cause he thought you might come back. You took a leave of absence at first, though from Microsoft, didn't you? Well, that was my second leave of absence in life, yes.

4:14 Um And if you hear of my demise. Read closely, maybe it was just another leaf of absence. But so but that was to study culinary, like cooking. Oh I I also well there's no there's two leaves I'm like, so I d I did uh

4:29 Gotta Chef school while I was at Microsoft. And then eventually when I retired from Microsoft, it was initially a leave of absence. Uh, Bill hoped I would come to my senses after being bored at home, but I wasn't, so

4:43 Um I never went back. So what got you interested in cooking? Yeah. Well, I was interested in cooking long before I even knew there was a computer. Um

4:52 Yeah, and uh Uh yeah, I started I think when I was nine years old. I discovered cookbooks at the local library. And uh I announced to my mother I was going to cook Thanksgiving dinner all by myself.

5:05 So I got this arm load of cookbooks and uh I cook Thanksgiving dinner. Um It wasn't that great, uh, by my current standards, but it wasn't such a disaster that it it you know turned me away from the topic. So I had always been very serious about food and cooking. And at one point while I was working at Microsoft I realized I had All these advanced degrees in

5:28 Topics I didn't actually spend that much time doing. And cooking is something I did spend time doing. Why don't I Actually get some real education on that. And so you took a leave of absence, convinced the the culinary institute to take you as a student. Well, I had to convince the culinary institute in France to take me as a student. I had to convince Bill to give me a leave of absence.

5:50 Um But it worked out. Yeah. Take me back to Microsoft, you guys made a lot of decisions at Microsoft in a very fast changing environment. Yep.

6:02 How did you think about those decisions? Well, I think there's there's two things. One is you try to be as analytical and as careful as you can about making a decision. Uh but the second is you also have to monitor how it's going and not be afraid to change your mind. Um You the personal computer revolution was something that

6:24 We take for granted Today. Back then, not so much. You know what, uh Microsoft we used to have a slogan. for the company, a computer on every desk and in every home.

6:37 And I took so much grief from people when I would say this in speeches where they would say, Oh, I'm never gonna have a computer in my home. That's just an absurd nerd fantasy. Well It worked. Now you have money in your pocket. Well, I I actually wrote a memo about that in Uh nineteen ninety. that you also would need one in every pocket.

6:59 Um And uh That we do have one in every pocket. Uh and by the way, our cars Are basically computers.

7:08 obviously you need engines and lots of other stuff, but a huge amount of computing goes into the automobile in to the navigation system, but even into how the engine operates. That's all A bunch of chips. Um Yeah, when I was a kid

7:24 you could go to a speed shop and they would have all these fancy uh accessories that hot rodters would put on. Um For a lot of uh cars these days the simplest way to change performance is

7:37 Literally with a Neprom with a a new chip. Where do you think we're going? Well, Um

7:46 Іно і шорт. You can make a whole Uh Will turn out to be

7:54 Pretty close to correct. As you get further out it gets much more difficult. Іно на Найтін Фівтіс Тер а С Science fiction a and actually up through the seventies. Science fiction novels posited this idea of

8:12 Інстелєр трав і роцін спай. That was really cool. The moon landing got people inspired. Uh And those they don't have computers. Um

8:24 And You know, even in Star Trek and in all of its both original incarnation, the recent ones They have a human driving the starship. Yeah. How absurd.

8:37 Um you know, you'd never do that. There's no Modern jet. That doesn't have an autopilot for God's sakes. Um So

8:45 Uh And of course that's because In that particular application. Uh Computers do a way better job.

8:54 With self driving cars that's a little bit more difficult because uh we have traffic and that traffic is other cars and it's kids running into the street and so forth. But if you're out there in two dimensions on a boat or three dimensions uh with an airplane.

9:10 Autopilots were great. Uh even auto landing systems work pretty well these days. Do you think we'll see uh totally like why don't we have autonomous trains then? 'Cause that's a closed network closed loop.

9:26 are autonomous for For all intents and purposes. They will have humans on board as a safety or a backup feature. But when you have Modern trains By which I don't mean any train in the United States, I'm afraid. But if you have the high speed uh trains that are going

9:43 Yeah, three hundred kilometers an hour. Uh in Europe. Um more increasingly in Asia. Uh You can't rely on humans to make all of the decisions. It's just we don't operate fast enough. We're not totally reliable. We can be distracted.

9:59 We're great for some things, don't don't get me wrong. But uh Those systems are very much controlled with computers. The same thing is true for uh most modern subway systems Yeah, you got lots of subway trains.

10:13 You have this complicated thing of uh different stations and so forth and Again, automation make is way safer Than just doing it. by human control.

10:25 Now you humans are still are involved and that's for a variety of reasons, some of them good reasons, some of them are more holdovers from the past that We'll eventually get over. Um

10:37 But for a whole set of things, yeah, why why would you use a human? Yeah, it doesn't I they are safer. So it doesn't make sense. But then we have to Answer all these societal questions about like well who's at fault of an autonomous car. Well Мі атмомент атономос кар.

10:55 Aren't really autonomous. As good a job as a human driver does. Okay, that's just Straight up the case where we are today. Because there's too many random things that can happen on the road. that the autonomous systems have a uh hard time doing.

11:14 Um But Over time that will change. And it wouldn't take very much of an improvement before they're better than we are. So now you're asking a really important societal question, which is

11:27 On the day when Autonomous cars are actually better. Than humans. Uh driving. Will we accept them?

11:37 And for lots of things there has been pushback, you know, the It it's been true for a long time. Uh that um Humans are the weakest part of a fighter jet. Yeah.

11:49 You should use drones. Yeah. You should totally use drones, but air force Which is composed entirely of pilots or former pilots. Hated that idea. Um

11:59 But Drums that are here to stay. And there will be um aerial combat drones. Um

12:07 Yeah, you know, the thing that's crazy about um Like the new Top Gun movie, which is a great movie. But You have an air to uh air missile. And that missile can take a ridiculous number of G forces because

12:21 It was built to and it you can engineer it for that. And the poor human Yeah. You know, passes out when you get too many G forces. Yeah. Um So

12:32 Yeah. Ultimately. The missiles win. And you know, maybe not this model on this thing and You know, it sure helps if you're Tom Cruise and you're in a Tom Cruise movie, you're probably not gonna get blown up.

12:44 Um And it's a fabulous human story, of course, i i in the movie. And there are pilots that are insanely uh good at what they do. But They can't take a hundred Gs.

12:56 Okay, and missiles can. Um Yeah, plus the other thing that is uh rude about um human pilots is You gotta call their mom when they die.

13:09 Yeah. Um Yeah, the the man space program is another sort of absurd thing. Um It started off

13:18 Wonderfully that the only way we could explore. Um uh space What for a certain class of things was with humans. Um

13:27 Well, it's long since passed. I mean, today the man space flight is a reality TV show. Um and in fact Yeah. The cutting edge of man of manned space flight is space tourism. That's what um blue origin and

13:42 SpaceX and others are gearing up for. And There's just no reason to take a fragile human up there. Yeah, the the amount of cost and complexity that goes into keeping this fragile human alive.

13:56 In a context for It really shouldn't be. Um I is enormous. Uh

14:03 Yeah, Mars exploration is a great example. There's you know, people want to colonize Mars. I was asked. Is Antarctica full? Yeah. You know, Antarctica is great compared to Mars.

14:15 Okay, it's warmer. It has air? It has water. It's got all these great features. But Yeah, to go to Mars you have to be exposed to a certain amount of radiation from cosmic rays.

14:28 It takes a really long time to get there. And There's lots of other things difficult. So if you look at the history of Mars Space probes. We've lost a ridiculous number of them.

14:41 Um And you know, you can say all that was a mistake here and a mistake. Well, yeah. 'Cause it's really complicated. Yeah. So Um Literally rocket science.

14:50 It is literally rocket science and um Yeah, voury. the rovers and the drone that they have on Mars right now, they have this problem that You can't control it from Earth anymore. Because the amount of time it takes a signal

15:06 Even traveling at the speed of light to get to Mars, it's minutes. Yeah. And so If you We're using that to drive in a

15:16 typical r like a remote control uh radio controlled car way. It would never work. So they have to make those things semi autonomous. And over time they'll become more and more autonomous. W do you think do you see the need for inner Planetary travel.

15:33 Or would you focus on something else? Well I I'm a huge fan of science, and I'm a huge fan of exploring the solar system. And Uh having in both interstellar

15:45 Oh. Inter Sol intra solar system and interstellar probes both. I think those are both ultimately fantastic things for us to do. To explore the world. But It's vastly cheaper and easier.

15:58 Uh And better. To do it with machines and to do it with humans. Um A n as in terms of a need to

16:07 Like colonize. Um The solar system I I don't think Think Pi people believe that that's an imperative.

16:17 As a holdover from the ideas of The age of imperialism when we thought oh yes and we have to go conquer and colonize the whole world. Um Well, it did work.

16:30 I mean there w there were Of a whole variety of cultures that at different points in history went and colonized various parts of the world. Um We're most familiar with the most recent ones, the ones that

16:41 s for example, European countries did That's how we got America. Um, you know, they they went to South America, they Uh had colonies in Africa and other places. But Even earlier than that.

16:54 The way humans got to Europe. was they left Africa. But at this stage. You have to say well, Gee, if we really need to leave this planet. A we must have screwed something up pretty badly.

17:09 Um, some people say well that's why we should go to Mars that we have a second Home for humanity. Well If you really had to do that, the moon is a lot closer. Um and has a variety of advantages. Or you could build large habitats in space.

17:25 Um There was a physics professor. uh named uh Gerard O'Neill at Princeton who uh was a big fan of this idea. Um

17:35 But so far we don't have a need to do that and Yeah. than to treat Earth as being disposable and say, Oh, it's okay, we're gonna go we'll have Mars. 'Cause if you keep thinking that way, you're gonna screw Mars up too.

17:53 Where are we going wrong in taking care of this planet? Humans are not Great. Yeah. long term things, okay? So Um

18:04 We all know that we should Eat right. And work out. Lots of us don't. And

18:12 That's because the immediate gratification of oh I'm late for an interview this morning. I I I gotta leave. I I don't have time to work out. That was me this morning.

18:22 Or Wow. That donut looks really great, or there's an extra slice of pizza left. Mean we are such suckers for that. It's ridiculous. Which is why

18:33 V If you take the standards of the past The average American is overweight. Yeah. What does it mean to be over if it's the average, if it's the majority? You know, it's a weird thing.

18:44 Um Mm. That's why we do a variety of self destructive behavior individually. As a society. We try to plan ahead a little more and for some things we're able to do that. But

19:00 If you take a problem like climate change It's Like the worst case. uh situation. Um I like to compare climate change to a uh

19:11 Uh to ecological disasters. So in Spain I don't know, twenty years ago, something like this. There was a flood. The flood washed over the banks of a river. Near where there was a gold mine.

19:26 Gold mines use Cyanide. To help. recover the gold from the dirt. So

19:33 There's this cyanide spill into the river. And it killed like a quarter million fish. Which floated downriver and piled up in the city of Seville in Spain. In August.

19:48 Yeah, you got a quarter million dead fish. Rotting in a river. In the middle of hot August. And boy, you know you have a problem. Yeah. And whenever we have a problem that is an ecological problem that is

20:02 Localized in space. Localized in time. And is easy to trace responsibility. We fix it.

20:11 Uh Love Canal. United States is a a super fun site. Huge amounts of chemicals were dumped for many years by a a company. Made the ground horribly poisoned. It's a tragedy. It should never have happened. But it did happen, so okay, we fixed it.

20:29 Um we even fixed a slightly less localized issue with Yeah, most Aaron um pollution and most um water pollution in the United States. Uh is solved.

20:42 Not solved in Beijing. Beijing has horrible air. It happens this summer in Seattle. We've had horrible air. Because of wild fires. That's not a controllable thing, and that is in part due to the climate thing, and part it's due to forestry practices. It's a whole set of stuff.

20:59 So As much as we can say oh we can feel superior that Los Angeles used to look like Beijing in terms of air and Los Angeles is way, way, way better. Yeah, we did fix that. And and China will fix it too, because eventually the people living in Beijing will say, Hey, this is screwed up.

21:16 Let's let's fix this. Um The forest fire problem is more diffuse. It affects Lots of things over a long period of time.

21:27 You know, the forestry practices that Uh. Mostly in government controlled national forests. Are there in part because they valued timber. And they never they wanted to stop all little fires. And it turns out if you stop all little fires, you leave tons of fuel for a big fire.

21:46 We gotta change that mindset, but that mindset is very ingrained. Um Uh now you get to to climate change writ large And you have the worst of all. situations.

21:59 Currently we're doing To first order approximation, exactly nothing. For climate change. You might say, Oh, what about all of the renewables? What about these other things? Yes, we do have some

22:12 Very admirable work that's going on. But the trouble is the world's also growing economically. Which is a good thing mostly. But as a r result the percentage of renewables Even if we grow renewables really fast, it's hard to grow it fast enough that

22:30 It makes up for all the coal plants that are being built in China and India and other places whose economy is booming. Um And if you measure CO two up on the top of Monica in Hawaii, that's where the Uh the best measurements come from Every year it's higher.

22:49 So No, we made no progress. But To make progress. We would have to

22:55 Do one of two things. We'd either have to invent A technology. It was just Totally superior to b fossil fuels. And someday we will.

23:06 When fossil fuels came in. Fossil fuels were superior to Um directly harvested fuel. So coal pushed out wood. And it was a good thing because uh

23:20 You know, England uh I was just in Scotland um a few weeks ago. Scotland used to be covered with trees. It it's a barentundra today.

23:31 Um lots of peat. But The M huge amounts what used to be forested. Well, you cut the trees down if i if your fuel needs.

23:41 And also your ship building and house building needs. grow faster than trees can replace. you get a totally deforested land, which is the first approximation what Britain is. Still a wonderful place to visit. I love it. But It's a problem. Um

23:59 The uh Petroleum. Pushed out. Certain other fuels. And

24:05 Well, one of my favorite little historical artifacts is There's a British humor magazine called Punch. Still around today. And In the late nineteenth century, I think like eighteen seventy five ish.

24:20 They Published a cartoon. And the cartoon was a uh a b a fancy uh dinner and ball

24:30 That was being thrown by the whales. In honor of Colonel Francis Drake. Frank Drake, probably. Um Drake.

24:39 He's the first guy to drill for oil. And uh He drilled for oil in Pennsylvania. Uh, Pennsylvania is blessed with having or at least the time they would have said blessed, you can argue that today, of course. It has a

24:55 crude oil that came out of the ground and didn't need very much refining. To be a replacement for whale oil in lamps. Yeah. You know, people are aware of the horrible slaughter of whales that went on. in the nineteenth century almost drove

25:10 Well it drove a few species extinct, almost drove all of them extinct. That was primarily to have fuel for lamps For reading at night. Okay, it was indoor illumination. So

25:24 It turns out that Petroleum based oil was just better. And It stopped failing. Um then within a few years.

25:33 Uh the electric light bulb that stopped using any kind of a burning fuel. Um And so the light bulb was just ridiculously better than having a flame. And so except for

25:47 very niche applications like a camping stove, maybe. course these days they're electric too. Um It won. Now we don't have those Solutions yet.

25:58 Um And we also were just not serious about climate change. You know, in two thousand five, two tausend six, you have Inconvenient Truth come out. No.

26:10 uh world was Rich. Okay. Where the Uh.

26:16 We didn't know it at the time, but the last few years of an incredible uh cycle of prosperity around the world. Two thousand eight, there's a financial crisis. It took a lot of the momentum out. You know, today.

26:31 Uh similar thing is are happening. Okay. We had the pandemic Slow little bit of uh fuel demand, not Mm. Not that much, but a little. We'll we'll we'll take what we can get.

26:42 Well, okay, out of the pandemic, now maybe we can roll up our sleeves and do the thing only We're now flirting with World War Three. And uh Energy sources that seemed like they were both Uh clean.

26:57 And reliable. like natural gas in Europe. Well, actually it was never clean. natural gas uh actually produces more global warming.

27:08 in in almost every case than coal. Um The the gas industry loves to say well when you burn it It's half of coal.

27:20 Um And that's true, but of course you also spill a lot of methane into the air. Massine. On the first year you spill it, it's a hundred and twenty times

27:29 Higher a global warming impact than CO two. Um Over time the methane decays. into CO two or it only becomes just as bad as CO two.

27:40 Um It doesn't take very much of a leakage of methane. Worst than Coal and All current scientific estimates

27:51 uh say that N natural gas is worse. But at least it was reliable and convenient. No one has to shovel coal. It does it burns cleanly, and it's so reliable.

28:03 Until Your main supplier is the one flirting most with World War Three. So whoops, they don't have Russian gas anymore. Uh big big problem for Europe. So

28:13 Asking Europe to uh make giant progress This winter seems kinda tough. Yeah, they're cutting down old growth forests now to For wood.

28:24 Yes. Going all the way back to back to pre yeah. Hm. Which. I mean the trouble is old. The old and old growth forest. You know, you cut the trees down and it takes a long time to Uh to grow back. To grow back. Um

28:40 So we have a a long duration problem. So it's not right in front of us. We have no sort of Sourceability. What's really causing the problem, or do we understand what's causing the problem? Well I think

28:54 So there's another factor which is Just Jealousy and human nature. Um Yeah, I think we understand.

29:03 What's causing the problem. Uh You know, the it's a whole variety of things around modern life. Um Transportation. You know, fossil fuels are great for transportation.

29:15 Um No. Uh The density. And the convenience of a liquid

29:22 Hydrocarbon fuel is just enormous. Um So we're making Margot's electric vehicles. Except Today.

29:31 Most electric vehicles. Are filled up with fossil derived electricity. Yeah. If you drive a Tesla and you live in the east coast United States. Statistically speaking.

29:43 You're hurting the climate, not helping it. Washington State we can feel slightly more Slightly better about it because w we have uh a mix of nuclear and hydro, so most of the power in Washington State. is at least clean so if you charge your Tesla up there that that helps, but Um

30:02 Anyway, he here's the worst part of it. It humans will typically put stuff off and put stuff off and put stuff off. And then you panic. Yeah, we we saw that with the pandemic. Okay.

30:15 I had been publicly saying that we had to worry about a both a natural pandemic and or a Bioterrorism. thing. I've been saying it for ten or fifteen years. Other people have been saying it for longer than I have. Um You know, in nineteen eighteen

30:32 You have this horrible pandemic. You know, that killed you know, three percent of the people. Five percent of the people worldwide, something like that. I mean that's a giant number, and it's a bigger number today than it was then. And that was without airplanes and without mass But No matter how much you

30:49 pound the table and say we need to take pandemic seriously. Nineteen eighteen was a long time ago. People forget. And in the trade off between what's our immediate gratification issue Mm.

31:04 And the long term. And i I had some very reasonable people who would argue with me on this pandemic issue. They would say but Look, I study heart disease. Or cancer. Or HIV or some other

31:17 Terrible disease. And Yeah, it may take You know, we may have a pandemic at some point, but shouldn't we put our first priority towards diseases that kill people every day rather than disease or situations that occur once every hundred years. Well

31:33 You have a mix. And my example there is um Fire sprinklers. So if we look up in this building or nearly any building that you would go in that's a modern building, and most older ones even You see fire sprinklers. Yeah.

31:51 But you also see lots of hundred year old buildings. Um sure in Seattle than the East Coast, but in east coast you see two hundred year old buildings. So the probability of a burning of a building burning down is not very high. But we have millions of buildings. So every day

32:09 Some building burns down. And Uh Fortunately it's not a coordinated thing. It's just one building will burn down or maybe you have a tragic uh wildfire that like destroys a a whole town as occurred in the mountains in California a few years ago. Those fires happen often enough that even though

32:31 You have a low risk on any individual day. We say, right, this is bullshit. It's it could happen. We're gonna put sprinklers everywhere. The trouble with the pandemic is that if it happens, even though the probability of a pandemic happening in a year might not be that different than the probability that a building burst down.

32:51 Yeah. One in a hundred? Say. Um In a at least within a year. Um

32:59 It does happen. And then when it does happen, it affects society in such a profound way because we're so dependent on Uh Transportation, logistics All of these things in modern life. But yeah, you should put some effort aside for pandemics, guys.

33:18 No. It seems obvious today. The hope, which is not I can't say as I feel whole terribly confident about it. The hope is that the world will

33:29 Remember this and we'll take more precautions'cause guess what? There will be another pandemic. Um, and I don't know when. And I don't know how bad. But it will occur.

33:41 And the fact is, as you mentioned a moment ago, modern life with uh air transportation and this incredible flow of people and goods around the world. It it makes it worse. Plus it's b i it it's asymmetric, right? If you're a nation And you want to cause harm to another nation.

33:59 You might not be able to afford tanks and missiles and all this other things, but you can do cyber, you can do biological weapons, you can do other things. Yes. Um This will sound very strange. But thank God for nuclear weapons. In that

34:17 Most Um countries with ill intent. Really they they they see the United States or uh the soviet former Soviet Union now Russia

34:29 As superpowers and nuclear weapons, they want a nuclear weapon, and it's really hard to make a real nuclear weapon. And it's so hard that even though a few countries have gotten them. It's not like everybody has them and it's cheap or it's easy. Uh bioterrorism is potentially worse than that because it's potentially much cheaper and much easier And

34:49 Uh It's also much harder to control. Um It that whole thing makes it a way worse thing. So I think we'll see a bioterrorism event someday. Yeah.

35:02 Just two years ago. I had said There will be a war of conquest in Europe. You would have said I was nuts. Right?

35:11 It's like the EU is already one uniform thing. What is Switzerland going to attack? I mean Come on, there can't be an attack in Europe. And as we speak, there's a war of conquest going on. In

35:27 But is geographically Europe. You you can say ah well historically Ukraine wasn't Europe, but okay, it's right beside all these other places that There are legally and treaty wise part of Europe. And we don't know where that where's gonna end. We don't know anything about it.

35:44 So Unfortunately It it's too easy to Think ill of people. They will eventually prove you correct.

35:54 Um You know, I I try to be an optimist about things. And it takes Some willpower because pessimism is just so damn easy. Anyway.

36:04 With the pandemic. We did panic. And when we panicked. We Did a lot of the right things.

36:12 Quickly. Um So I I heard a t a speech by the um CEO of uh uh one of the companies that developed a vaccine. And um

36:26 Uh Pfizer, I believe it was. And he said, you know. If I had told everybody that we needed to do it in eight years, they would have said you're crazy, it takes us ten to twelve. So I told him I had to do it in eight months.

36:40 Because if I told them I Years. They would have Taken the old process. And tried to fix it in little ways and that would never work.

36:50 Uh this is a brilliant sp whether he really thought all this up front, I don't know, but it it's a brilliant analysis, even if it's after the fact. Because What you would have to do is break everything you knew. Yeah. You still

37:05 care a tremendo about safety and all these other uh issues. And by God, uh The both the um uh the Pfizer vaccine and the the Moderna uh vaccine. Uh not only did they do

37:19 Develop them in record time. They are among the best vaccines we've ever made for anything in terms of their uh efficacy. Now the damn virus keeps evolving as viruses do, so that Uh has uh m might make people say, Well what do you mean I have to keep getting booster, that's that's no good.

37:39 Um but without this uh these techniques from modern uh Uh biology. uh that allowed them to uh engineer these vaccines in a fundamentally different way, we never would have made it.

37:52 But here's the problem with climate. So okay, there will be a day when we really panic on climate. I predict. I I don't know when that day will be. Um

38:04 Yeah. I don't know what set of effects or problems w it would it take to make us panic, but let's say that there's a day when we really panic. Um You know in World War Two. The

38:18 America had After World War One was Tremendously isolationalist. We neglected our defenses. We But then there's Pearl Harbor.

38:30 And that was a wake up call that you just Couldn't ignore. Uh, most people don't realize we had not declared war on Nazi Germany. Uh before Pearl Harbor, and in fact

38:41 We never declared war on them first. Within a few days of Pearl Harbor, Germany declared war on us. Sounds like oh right, we have a multi front war. And America got serious.

38:55 Um Half of the uh officers in the US uh army were let go within three months. Oh that Because They were what?

39:05 People call parade generals. They were a bunch of maybe distinguished people, but th all they had done for the last You know? Thirty years is

39:16 Lead parades and marching bands. Um Well here's the problem about climate change. So Suppose that we panic one day. We say right.

39:27 From tomorrow onward there will be no more emissions. Well, unfortunately, the chemistry and physics of uh climate change is not very forgiving. So when you emit CO two. It stays in the atmosphere for a really long time.

39:45 Um Thousands of years. Tens of thousands of years. Yeah.

39:52 You wouldn't be totally wrong by saying there was a twenty thousand year lifespan. Yeah. The same as never from a human life I'm

40:01 So Turns out if you stopped all emissions On day one. The climate will continue to drift drift upwards. For about a hundred years.

40:16 Um I I've written a bunch of papers on global warming. I've done this calculation, other people have done this calculation. You know, you can quibble as to whether it's eighty five years or a hundred and ten years, but it's Something in that range. Then.

40:30 It'll slowly start going down. It will take one hundred and forty five years. For it to equal And that was assuming you did it. Instantly.

40:47 Usually. With Pearl Harbor with the pandemic. We don't do the panic. Like we didn't panic in the pandemic when We first heard oh there's people getting sick in China.

40:58 No no no it was when people started dying. Actually first in Seattle, that was the One of the first uh said case in the US. Was a nursing home. Just a few miles from here, where unfortunately

41:11 uh someone w who was in contact with someone who'd flown from China recently and It killed a ton of people at the nursing home. Well, That gets your attention. You know, what will it take in global? I don't know.

41:24 But We have this problem that at the moment we're not Uh developing alternative energy sources fast enough. As I said, perhaps extremely good reasons, like hey, we can't because

41:39 Winter's coming and we have a war on. I get it. Um But Um

41:45 Once we get there. Just switching over, and of course you can't switch over the whole economy. In a day. If then get more realistic about it. Then

41:55 That says you probably are gonna have increasing temperatures for more than a hundred years after that day. Now the it turns out there's a technological a possible technological fix to that, which is something called geoengineering. Which gets people very riled up because they they Oh that's

42:15 That's terrible for X, Y, and Z reasons. What what is geoengineering? So geoengineering is a way to directly Uh Come back. uh global warming.

42:26 Okay. Well here's the deal. Um The earth is kept warm by sunlight from the sun. That is our primary source of hit. We would be

42:37 All frozen. Here on earth if that wasn't the case. Uh the problem that Uh the CO two the enhanced CO two in the atmosphere and and other greenhouse gases is that Light will come from the sun.

42:51 It bounces off the earth. Some of it reflects off as light. Then of the He that goes into, say, the ground. That makes the ground hot and it gives off a little bit of infrared radiation.

43:11 The infrared radiation used to just pass right through the atmosphere. Back out into space. Still does, mostly. But a tiny bit of it gets trapped.

43:24 Did it put this in number. The CO two traps it. Okay. So if you have a flask of CO two or other gases And you shine. Uh

43:36 infrared light of the appropriate wavelength through it. It absorbs it. Okay. So the more CO two in the environment or in in our atmosphere, the more we're going to retain Yes. And The clasic

43:51 A metaphor for this is a greenhouse. If you're in a greenhouse, the visible light of the sun goes through the glass or the plastic that makes the greenhouse. The infrared radiation from the things inside that are I heat it up.

44:06 doesn't pass through, it gets trapped, and that's why a greenhouse can be so warm, even if it's the middle of winter in Alaska. You can be much warmer in a greenhouse because it traps the heat. So the but the amount of heat that's trapped is tiny. It's about one percent.

44:26 Roughly of what the Sun Um produces. So if you average the sun's output You're on earth. Over the whole earth.

44:36 And over the whole. uh year. It's about three hundred watts per meter. Rough numbers. The amount of uh extra heat that's trapped in the atmosphere

44:49 is a quantity called radiative forcing. And That's about Two point something. Uh a little less than one percent.

45:00 Um but is that compounding every year? Yes. Banks get rich from an ATM. Okay. When you take money out of an ATM There's little charge.

45:13 That occurs. Maybe it's not directly visible there, it's just a monthly charge or this charge. But they take a little bit. And they don't take very much. But One percent of a big number of a ginormous number. Is a lot.

45:28 But here's the thing. If you could make the sun One percent dimmer. Well, that would solve the problem, wouldn't it? Yeah, there's natural things that effectively do this. One is

45:42 Certain kinds of clouds. Clouds, it turns out the physics of clouds is very complicated. But Uh clouds. Up in the uh high atmosphere.

45:52 Uh Can reflect the sunlight. Doesn't hit the ground. That helps. Ice helps.

46:00 Okay, so one of the big problems in the Arctic Is you have all of this area covered with sea ice. CIs. The first order approximation is white. It reflects all of the light.

46:12 If you replace that CI melt. Now you have water. First order approximation, deep ocean water is black. It absorbs all of it.

46:22 Big problem. Um Deserts. actually reflect a lot. The Sahara Desert reflects a tremendous amount of

46:32 Uh of head. So if you could reflect enough of this um sunlight back into space. You'd solve global warming. Now there's simple things which sound dumb, but they're a good idea.

46:46 Uh they wouldn't fix the whole problem, but they would go a little ways, which is We should have white roads. Should always have a white roof. Black roofs are terrible.

46:55 From this perspective. Um However, if you really wanted to affect this, what you'd have to do is put uh particles in the upper atmosphere. And There's a bunch of ways to do this, but one

47:10 uh when inspiration is uh Volcanoes. So when volcanoes erupt, they put gases and particles. Um Into the atmosphere.

47:22 A very strong volcano puts it in the upper atmosphere, the stratosphere. And Mount Panatubo did that in nineteen ninety one. Yet. uh changed uh global temperatures by one to one point eight degrees Fahrenheit for a year.

47:39 After about a year, year and a half, it falls out of the sky. So there are people that want to put These particles up there. And there's ways that you could engineer And that is one of the methods of geoengineering. It's that one's called solar radiation management, just to so you can have an acronym.

47:59 How do you think about the second order Consequences So There will be second order consequences.

48:07 And my analogy there is if I had a heart attack right now. They would take me to Uh the hospital. They'd Split my sternum open.

48:18 Crack my ribs. Break every one of them with a big spreader. And do open heart surgery. It'd be terrible consequences. But it might save my life, so

48:27 It's worth it. Um The big fear that people have about geoengineering is Two One is

48:40 Something I call the little engine that could. And this book is a As a kid about little trains. And they have to take some important thing, I think it's medicine actually, over a mountain to a town. And

48:52 The big trains won't do it. And the little engine that could says, I think I can, I think I can. And There are people who view this climate uh situation that way.

49:05 The If only we just You know Have the will power. We could

49:13 Just do the right thing. And if we all just say I think I can And our politicians make tough choices and We You know, cut back on

49:23 a whole variety of other things that oh we could do it. And my answer to that is the little engine that could ought to mean that no one is overweight. And I I don't mean to fat shame. But The number of people who wish they could lose weight. Just to if there's some people are happy being overweight. I mean, I'm overweight myself. This is me I'm talking about. But

49:49 Um Will power. Is Extremely hard when there are Lots we A, you're a human being.

49:59 And B, there's lots of other uh intervening factors. So One idea is hey if we if you Offer geoengineering as a solution. People will gravitate to that solution rather than making hard decisions.

50:14 And they'll do that even if Global warming or even if Juan Jing doesn't even work yet. It's a fair comment. But to that I say, okay, on the day that we have every year there's lower CO two measured in the atmosphere. Then I'll shut up.

50:29 Until then. Uh not so much. The other concern is oh well if you do that, you will get some other Big problem. They'll say, Oh, you're just trading one problem for another.

50:41 And to that I say. Yes, exactly. Just like all of human history. Yeah. Um Yeah. Mm.

50:49 We We're hunter gatherers. Then we invented agriculture. Which was great. We could have a larger population. The population didn't have to migrate with uh wherever the food was, so we could have a civilization.

51:04 We had leisure time, we invented art and culture and all these wonderful things flourished under agriculture. But Then we discovered oops, there's things called droughts and crop failures and So for the first time.

51:18 You had uh catastrophes where hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people died. You can't have a million people die at once and hunt or gather a thing. You don't have enough uh A, there's not enough people. And B they're all dispersed and they all have their own situation. There than you could. So yeah, agriculture was terrible. But then we've learned to fix those things in agriculture. We've learned to fix more and more and away you go. Mm.

51:41 Another one that people love to bring up, which I is a funny one, is that Around the turn of the century our biggest cities, New York City, London, and so forth. We Drowning in horse ur urine and buried in horse shit.

51:55 because they were full of horses and it was this giant problem and no one could figure out quite what to do. You know, they would build street cars and trains helped in between things, but they couldn't build enough trains inside. And then the automobile came along. Yeah. Which it sounds funny, but the automobile help Fix an ecological problem.

52:16 But It had lots of other problems. It has a pollution problem. It also just kills a lot of Kills a lot of people. Still kills a lot of people. Right?

52:24 More people will die in uh car accidents in the United States this year. Then uh Died, you know, by Like a factor of

52:35 Ten. Died in nine eleven. Um P usually the number of people killed or maimed in Car accidents is about double the number of murders.

52:45 We're outraged about murders. We're not that outreach about car accidents. And partially that's because we're addicted to the freedom of mobility that that uh cars and other motor vehicles give us. Um

52:59 So yeah, humans, there will probably be some consequences. So you should only pull out the Uh the geoengineering uh fix.

53:13 If it's otherwise. Unmitigated disaster. Just like they wouldn't crack my chest open if I went into the emergency room with a hangnail. And they reserve that for a very special set of circumstances. How do you think about the global cor co cooperation that's also needed between nations because you as one nation can have an impact

53:36 But if another nation defects and in some cases they would get an advantage from defecting in terms of cost of manufacturing, cost of energy. A huge advantage. So Yeah. Of course. people are jealous of other folks that don't do the the don't do the s the same thing.

53:55 You know, we Uh That's one of the problems with Global. Warming or global.

54:01 Climate. is that it affects all of us. Um Uh I'm involved in a nuclear company. And

54:10 For a while we had a deal to build one of our brand new plants. Uh, we we've invented a new type of nuclear plant that's way safer and it's got lots of other Benefits. We were gonna build our first one in China. And there were lots of

54:24 People in the US that said how how dare you build it in China? Wha why would you let them have it? And I said,'Cause we all sare share the same atmosphere. Yeah. And they're the ones that are building new coal plants. We're not building new coal plants in the US. So Actually that's what the problem is. Now as it turns out

54:42 Um Uh that project didn't go forward and we're currently trying to build a our new plant in Wyoming and we have a deal to do that, which is very exciting. Um

54:56 Issue that Uh the developed countries of the world it's The United States or the UK is an example. We've both been burning lots of fossil fuels for Hundred and fifty years at least.

55:09 Um And yet we want to tell China and India What to do. That they should not do that. Yeah. And those people say, Hey, what do you mean? We have

55:19 We have l uh people who are living way below your standard of living. Yeah. You got rich. This way. It's our turn, damn it. And

55:30 Irrespective of What you think about the moral imperatives there. short term trade off versus long term and so forth. We just don't have a way to force them. Yeah.

55:42 You want to go to war over it and That would be Insane. And would have more climate. In particular be insane for the climate, you know, the

55:51 Uh. Besides the Uh uh war in Ukraine um Cutting back on

55:59 Uh uh Europe's uh Climate uh Obligations. You you can't blow up whole cities and set them on fire.

56:09 Without have a lot of emissions. Um Uh uh. Because the human tragedy is so so so much worse, it it seems weird to call it that. It's it's mostly this insanely tragic. uh human uh human and humanitarian issue, but It also is bad for the climate.

56:33 I wanna switch gears just to the last question that I have for you. What do you wish you knew today, or what do you wish you used what do you know today? This is a better way to word this. What do you know today that you wish you knew earlier? Well, uh you know, there there's Tons of ways of answering that question. Uh you know, I uh clearly in retrospect in two thousand eight I should have shorted Lehman Brothers. And uh you know, I should have gone long on Peloton before the pandemic and short sold at the peak. You know, of of course you can have those things, but

57:10 Um That kind of second guessing isn't particularly helpful. Um You know I I At the moment I can't think of any giant

57:21 Is there anything about life that you know now that you Well God, I would hope so, because it would mean I hadn't grown as a person if there was nothing that I wished I knew. Uh that said I it's hard for me to come up with an exactly ah what was the the empiphany That I had that taught me this great lesson for life on you know this particular day of my life.

57:47 Um The uh So I I I I don't have a great single example. I'll think about something will come to me later tonight and I'll think, damn it. Yeah. If only I had thought of that.

58:01 You know, in school I would walk out of a test and in the hallway walking away suddenly the answer to one of the problems would like to pop into my head and it's like damn it That's how it works. I want to thank you for taking the time today, Nathan we're being told that uh This is the end. Hay Okay.

58:21 Well, thank you. Thanks for listening and learning with us for a complete list of episodes, show notes, and transcripts and more go to fs dot blog slash podcast or just Google the Knowledge Project. Recently I've started to record my reflections and thoughts about the interview after the interview. I sit down, highlight the key moments that stood out for me, and I also talk about

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