Ep 50: Kelly Wanser, Executive Director at SilverLining
Episode description
Today’s guest is Kelly Wanser, Executive Director of SilverLining, a mission organization driving research to ensure safe pathways for climate within a decade.
Previously, Kelly was the director of the Marine Cloud Brightening Project, a program focused on research in reflecting sunlight to reduce heat in climate. Kelly is member of the National Academy of Sciences President’s Circle. She also served as Senior Advisor to Ocean Conservancy on climate-ocean risk and to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on industry strategy for fusion energy. A technologist, executive and entrepreneur, she previously founded companies in IT infrastructure, analytics and security, and is the author of over 20 patents. She resides in San Francisco.
In today’s episode, we cover:
- Overview of geoengineering
- Challenge of predicting earth system’s response to heat stress and risk of hitting catastrophic tipping points
- 'The case for geoengineering
- SilverLining’s work, and how it came to be
- What the critics say about geoengineering, and Kelly’s responses
- 'Some example projects they have taken on at SilverLining'
- How the org is funded, and future goals in this regard
- What fossil fuel companies think of geoengineering
- Potential risks, side effects, and unintended consequences
- Research vs widescale deployment, the best ways to stage exploration in this area
- What else can be impactful in the climate fight
- Kelly’s advice to others trying to find their lane to help
Links to topics discussed in this episode:
Stephen Schneider: https://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/References/Biography.html
IPCC special report on oceans and cryosphere: https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/home/
The Royal Society: https://royalsociety.org/
Marine cloud brightening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_cloud_brightening
Strategic aerosol injection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection
Some links provided by Kelly to learn more about her work:
- TEDSummit 2019 Talk: Emergency Medicine for Our Climate Fever
- Report: for U.S. Policymakers: Ensuring a Safe Climate: A National Imperative for Research in Climate Intervention and Earth System Prediction
- Testimony to the U.S. House Science, Space and Technology Committee, Subcommittee on Environment and Subcommittee on Energy Hearing — Geoengineering: Innovation, Research, and Technology, Nov 8, 2017
You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant