Talking Climate By Katharine Hayhoe

These days, I’m often accused of being a “hopium peddler” – someone who promotes overly optimistic, even delusional solutions to the climate crisis, offering false comfort like some kind of emotional drug that helps us avoid facing hard truths. It's a strange accusation to level at a climate scientist who’s spent the last twenty years warning about the very real risks climate change poses to every aspect of our lives.

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Negotiations at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, ended this weekend. The final proposal asks wealthy nations to provide $300 billion a year to help poorer nations make the energy transition and adapt to climate change. This is more than the $100 billion commitment from a few years ago. However, most countries didn't even deliver on that.

These days, every headline is filled with the impacts of climate disasters. In the U.S., at least half the rain from Hurricane Helene was supercharged by climate change. As the waters recede, we’re only beginning to grasp the full extent of the damage—just as Milton, another record-breaking hurricane, threatens Florida. Over the last four weeks, there have been floods all across Asia including in Thailand last week, Nepal the week before, and India, China, and Vietnam before that.

Many people feel that climate action doesn't align with their values. This is especially true in the U.S., where climate change has been a highly polarized issue for nearly 20 years. However, research shows we can change this. Framing climate change through values like faith or national security can significantly shift opinions, a Yale University study found.

Compelling climate narratives in television shows and movies can help shift attitudes on climate change, a new study finds! Over a thousand participants were recruited, and researchers divided them into two groups. Half watched a climate-focused episode of Madam Secretary about a super typhoon menacing the Pacific Island nation of Nauru. The other half watched another episode of the same show about U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

Last week, my newsletter focused on the risks of extreme heat around the world, and how to stay safe: but I could write about this every week. The US National Weather Service just introduced a new Heat Risk forecast map showing where people will face dangerous levels of heat. Last week, the entire southern US, from California to Florida, wasbaking in yet another early-season heatwave, with Phoenix, AZ setting a new daily high of 112F (44C) last Thursday.

My friend Patricia Solis is a geographer who studies resilience and helps people prepare for climate-induced disasters. Not long after she arrived at Arizona State University (ASU), she was working with community members to map heat-related deaths in the city and noticed a peculiar hot spot. “Why would death rates be clustered there?” she wondered. “It must be a data error.” A few days later, driving to campus, she neared that hotspot.

The tiny southern town of Pornainen, Finland is getting a 1-megawatt sand battery. The battery will be capable of storing up to 100 MW-hours of thermal energy for months at a time, entirely weaning the town off oil. This will be Finland's second sand battery after a smaller one was built by the same company, Polar Night Energy, in the town of Kankaanpää in 2022. That first one was the firstfully functional sand battery ever built. How do sand batteries work?

This month, I attended the Aspen Ideas: Climate summit in Miami. It’s the third time it’s been held, but my first time attending. To make it a worth-while travel bundle, I managed to pack in 24 meetings and events while I was there, including giving a climate science update to about 40 media representatives, speaking at my aunt’s church, St Paul's in Delray Beach, and sharing the stage with Al Roker during a main stage plenary session.