Kevin Anderson (climatologist)

Kevin Anderson is a British mechanical engineer and climate researcher . He has u. a. holds a professorship in energy and climate change at the University of Manchester and is assistant director of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research .

Life

Originally he didn't want to become an academic. He grew up near a nuclear power station. His father worked there and his death was a result of it. This aroused his interest in environmental and energy issues early on.

At the age of 16, Anderson moved out of home and initially trained with the Navy as a ship mechanic. He later attended university and graduated as a mechanical engineer . After graduating from university, he worked in the oil industry for about 10 years , where he was involved in the design and commissioning of oil drilling rigs . At that time (1980s) he was concerned with, among other things, the possibility of preventing oil spills and the release of CFCs . He became increasingly aware of the harmful effects industrial processes have on the environment, and he began to study climate change . So he went back to the university for a master’s degree to learn more about environmental issues, climate change, economics and law, and then obtained his doctorate. He then went back to industry for a year.

In 2009 and 2010 he was Director of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, associated with a professorship at the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia . He has been Deputy Director at the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research since 2011 and is a professor at the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester . Since summer 2016 he has also been a visiting professor for “Climate Change Leadership” at Uppsala University (Sweden).

Research and positions on climate policy

Anderson has analyzed the IPCC projections for future global warming and considers them to be grossly over-optimistic. Of the 400 scenarios under which there is at least a 50% chance that the two-degree target will be achieved, 334 include the extensive use of technologies with negative emissions (removal of CO ₂ from the earth's atmosphere by means of geoengineering ) in the calculation a. In the 56 remaining scenarios, the CO ₂ emissions peaked around 2010. He considers the statements of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change unrealistic that efforts to meet the two-degree target will not have a significant impact on economic growth. According to him, wealthy individuals with high CO ₂ emissions will have to significantly reduce their energy consumption and consumption of material goods and have to accept immediate and fundamental changes in their lifestyle - at least until the transformation away from fossil fuels is complete.

Anderson does not assume that the climate crisis can still be solved within the capitalist system of rules. In 2013 he once said: “Perhaps limiting the temperature rise to two degrees at the time of the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 or even around the turn of the millennium could have been achieved by means of gradual adjustments within political and economic hegemony. But climate change is a growing phenomenon! Today, in 2013, the prospect of post-industrial nations with high CO has ₂ emissions radically changed. Our continued, collectively wasteful handling of CO ₂ has ruined all chances of a 'gradual change'. Today, after two decades of bluff and lies, the remaining CO ₂ budget demands a revolutionary change in political and economic supremacy. "

Anderson says he has not flown by plane since 2004. He repeatedly stated that due to the high CO ₂ emissions from air travel, climate scientists should be role models in this regard.

The Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg stated in an interview in 2019 that climatologists such as Kevin Anderson and Glen Peters checked the speeches she had written for accuracy and precision.

Publications (selection)

• Kevin Anderson, Glen Peters: The trouble with negative emissions . In: Science . 354, No. 6309, 2016, pp. 182-183. doi : 10.1126 / science.aah4567 .
• Kevin Anderson: Duality in climate science . In: Nature Geoscience . 8, 2015, pp. 898-900. doi : 10.1038 / ngeo2559 .
• Kevin Anderson, Alice Bows : A new paradigm for climate change . In: Nature Climate Change . 2, 2012, pp. 639-640. doi : 10.1038 / nclimate1646 .
• Kevin Anderson: The inconvenient truth of carbon offsets . In: Nature . 484, No. 7, 2012. doi : 10.1038 / 484007a .
• Kevin Anderson, Alice Bows: Beyond 'dangerous' climate change: emission scenarios for a new world . In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences . 369, 2010, pp. 20-44. doi : 10.1098 / rsta.2010.0290 .
• Kevin Anderson, Alice Bows: Reframing the climate change challenge in light of post-2000 emission trends . In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences . 366, 2008, pp. 3863-3882. doi : 10.1098 / rsta.2008.0138 .

Web links

• kevinanderson.info (personal website)
• Kevin Anderson on Twitter
• Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research: Kevin Anderson
• University of Manchester: Prof. Kevin Anderson
• Offsetting under pressure . In: Nature Climate Change . 2, 2012, p. 307. doi : 10.1038 / nclimate1510 . (Interview with Kevin Anderson)
• Kevin Anderson: The 10:10 campaign offers more than emissions reductions. In: The Guardian , September 3, 2009.
• Kevin Anderson: Paris, climate and surrealism: how numbers reveal an alternate reality (video, 1 hour 26 min). Cambridge Climate Lecture Series, March 9, 2017.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Interview with Kevin Anderson (video, accessed March 19, 2017).
2. ↑ Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research: New Director at the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research ( Memento of the original from March 19, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . January 31, 2011. Retrieved March 19, 2017. 
3. ^ Uppsala University: Kevin Anderson is the new Zennström Visiting Professor of Climate Change Leadership . August 22, 2016. Retrieved March 19, 2017.
4. ↑ Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research: IPCC 2 ° C scenarios 'wildly overoptimistic', a commentary in Nature Geosciences. ( Memento of the original from March 19, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. November 30, 2015. Retrieved March 19, 2017. 
5. ↑ The world can be saved - but not within the system. In: Heidelberg November 24 , 2013, accessed January 3, 2020 . 
6. ^ Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research: Kevin Anderson is the new Zennström visiting Professor in Climate Change Leadership. ( Memento of the original from March 20, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. August 22, 2016. Retrieved March 19, 2017. 
7. ^ Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research: Conference travel options: a comparative theoretical discussion. ( Memento of the original from March 20, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. November 9, 2012. Retrieved March 19, 2017. 
8. ↑ Kevin Anderson: Hypocrites in the air: should climate change academics lead by example? From: kevinanderson.info, April 12, 2013. Retrieved March 19, 2017
9. ↑ Interview with Greta Thunberg: "It is a good sign that you hate me". Spiegel Online, February 2, 2019, accessed February 2, 2019 .