“With science plus action, things can get better.”

As a child, Kate Marvel didn’t dream of being a scientist; maybe an actress or a writer, but regardless of science. (She thought it was “so boring”.) A single astronomy class in college, however, would forever change her trajectory.

Today, Marvel is a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and Columbia University, where she observes the big picture of climate change, using supercomputers and satellite observations. He received a PhD. in Theoretical Particle Physics from Cambridge University in 2008.

A good part of his time is also devoted to talking and writing about climate change. On top of a column for Scientific American called “Hot Planet,” and his 2017 TED Talk on Clouds and Climate Change which received over a million views, is a contributor to All we can save: truth, courage and solutions to the climate crisis, a new collection of essays by women in the climate movement.

Marvel has a reserved optimism about the future of Earth (her favorite planet) and the climate crisis, which she describes simply as “a problem with a solution”. He believes that we humans are in control of our own destiny and it is up to us to work together to prevent the worst.

The following interview, edited for clarity and brevity, is part of Inverse Future 50 series, a group of 50 people who will be forces of good in the 1920s.

Your PhD was in theoretical physics, but now you work as a climate scientist. How did that transition happen?

Basically, I loved physics; I liked using math to find out about the universe. I was studying everywhere in the universe, and then I realized that the Earth is the only good part.

It was a much easier transition, intellectually, than I thought. I use math, statistics and physical theories to find out about the world. It is only now that I study this planet, unlike all planets.

“We can shape the future that we want. “

You said earlier that Earth is your favorite planet. Because?

I love space, I’ve always been interested in space and cosmology. But the problem with space is that it wants to kill us. You leave the planet and there is no oxygen, there is no water.

This planet is so special because it is the only place we know for sure has absolutely perfect living conditions. And I like life very much; I like people, I like societies, I like animals, I like ecosystems and all these things happen This planet.

What were you like as a child?

I have great and supportive parents. And I’ve always been encouraged to take an interest in things; I was one of those guys who was into dinosaurs for a month, and then about marine biology for another.

But from about 12 years on, I was adamant that I didn’t want to be a scientist; I didn’t want to be someone who did anything with math or science, because I thought it was so boring. And largely the reason is that the way I was taught was really boring. I thought, “Why would anyone care about physics?” I wanted to be a writer; I wanted to be an actress.

And then I went to college and took an undergraduate astronomy course. I remember sitting in class, thinking, “Oh my God, this is amazing; Could I know more about this, and all I have to do is overcome my fear of math? ”

You are featured in a new collection of essays in All we can save. What motivates you to reach the general public and does this ever work against you in academia?

[Writing] helps me as a scientist – to be able to think, “Okay, why is this really important? Why would anyone care? How can I explain this thing I’m thinking about in a way that someone without this particular background might understand and find relevant?”

I have a lot of criticism of the traditional academic structure, where you are a physicist, or you are a biologist, or you can just study this thing. If you really care about the planet and climate change, you I can not just study one thing. Some areas of academia have been better at embracing it than others.

You are quite active on Twitter.

Twitter can be really useful for broadcasting, and I’ve met a lot of people in real life that I knew before on Twitter. In general, if someone looks really cool on Twitter, they are really cool in real life.

But sometimes it’s more like there is a machine where you would enter a scientific fact or a silly joke, and then the machine would insult you in many different ways – I feel Twitter is sometimes.

How are you relaxing these days?

I have a new person in my family, so there isn’t much relaxation going on. It has been a stressful time for all of us and I have found that I get really anxious when I try to read or watch something where someone is endangered for any length of time, which basically means I can’t consume anything with a storyline.

I watched a lot The British Baking Show, which I love; just having very strong opinions on people’s cakes, and if someone has a bakery disaster and has to go home, that’s fine.

You’ve talked about clouds as a little-studied variable in climate change.

I’m interested in this question of exactly how hot the planet will become. And, to a large extent, we don’t know how hot it will get – because we don’t know what humans will do; we do not know what carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas concentrations will look like by the end of the century. Hence, this is the biggest wild card.

But, even if we did, we still wouldn’t know exactly how hot it would be. And this is because of what we call feedback processes. As the Earth warms, the climate changes. We get changes in rain patterns, atmospheric humidity, cloud cover, ice cover. And all of these things can change the rate of heating.

And the clouds are one of the biggest wildcards there. Because clouds are incredibly complicated – they are difficult to correct in a global climate model – and extremely important for the planet’s energy balance; clouds play a very important role in regulating the current planet temperature. So, the reason I’ve been working on clouds isn’t that I’m inherently interested in clouds – I actually hate clouds, I just want it to be sunny all the time. But the reason is that they can really affect the planet’s response to rising carbon dioxide concentrations.

You seem a little optimistic that humanity can fight the climate crisis.

I wouldn’t say that optimistic, necessarily.

We know why it is getting warmer and we know where these greenhouse gas emissions come from.

And we, as a society, can choose to do something about it – at any time.

I think many people we are choosing to do something about it.

I wouldn’t say it’s as much optimism as it’s just an understanding that this is a problem with a solution.

“With science more action, things can go better. “

What is your biggest concern about the climate crisis?

As we have also seen with the Covid-19 crisis, this notion that we have science, yet it is not enough.

It’s not enough to stand up to people … who resist listening to those messages.

You can tell people to stand apart from each other and wear a mask, and some people will, and then other people, for a whole variety of different reasons, will say, “No, you’re not gonna tell me what to do. . “

And with climate change it’s the same thing. There was the idea that, “Oh well, we’re going to respond to climate change by absorbing carbon in the atmosphere and adapting to the new climate, whatever it is, using the best science available.” And since when have we ever done this?

The thing that keeps me awake at night is this kind of irrational human response to rising temperatures. It’s not something I understand, because I’m a physicist, I don’t study people. But that’s the thing that scares me the most.

This series focuses on the 2020s. What’s a big prediction you have for this decade?

I’m a climate scientist, so I use climate models to say:

“If we do, this is the realm of the possibilities that could arise from those choices.

“So if we take this seriously; if we decarbonize the electricity sector by 2035, if we change our transportation system, if we find viable alternatives to farmed meat, I think we could look back with pride, saying,” Hey, we saw this problem coming up and we really took steps to fix it. “”

There will still be climatic upheavals, the world will still be hot, but we have really hit the worst.

But if we don’t get serious, if we don’t prioritize this, who knows what this next decade will bring?

I’m not just talking about climate disruption; I’m talking about the social upheaval that also arises in reaction to this. So, things could be really, really bad.

This is not flipping a coin. This is not something we just have to wait and see how it works out – we can shape the future we want.

Since we’re almost done with 2020, and it’s been so awful – sorry, historical – year, what is a moment you will remember of it?

I mean, I live in New York City. And I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sirens. I don’t think I’ll ever forget to walk beside the refrigerated trucks parked outside the hospitals. So, I’ll remember it; to emphasize how awful this year has been.

But I will also remember how everyone wears a mask in New York. You go out on the street in my neighborhood, everyone wears a mask; people have moved their social life outdoors. And although cases are increasing right now, we haven’t returned to where we were in April. And I remember a day in May, where you could hear the birds again. There were fewer sirens and more birds.

So, this gives me the confidence that, with science plus action, things can get better.

Kate Marvel is a member of the Inverse Future 50, a group of 50 people who will be forces of good in the 1920s.