Dr. Joel Myers spoke about his new book, "Invisible Iceberg: When Climate and Weather Shaped History," as well as his lifelong passion for meteorology.
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00:00 Well, I've always been fascinated by the weather and the impact it's had on humanity and also
00:06 in history, and so it ties in with my life's work.
00:09 And there's so many stories to tell, and I thought many people would be interested in
00:15 reading the stories and seeing how it ties in, of course, with climate, which is a major
00:21 focus of so much interest and concern today.
00:24 Give me some sense of the lessons for today.
00:27 Well, obviously, this book's about what happened in history and how so important weather and
00:34 climate was in determining the course and the pathway that got us here.
00:39 And now we're dealing with the real challenge of warming, a lot of it being caused by human
00:45 activities.
00:47 And so we need to know what's real and make real decisions based on the data.
00:53 And there's a lot of talk today about the warming, but what is it going to mean specifically?
00:59 That's what's not getting enough attention.
01:01 So what AccuWeather's doing now is providing answers as to what the warming is going to
01:07 mean for particular places and in terms of parameters and information that will really
01:12 help businesses make and governments make policy decisions around the changing climate.
01:19 What made you fall in love with meteorology?
01:22 Well, when I was three years old, I fell in love with snow growing up in Philadelphia.
01:28 And by the time I was seven, I knew I wanted to be a weather forecaster.
01:32 And when I was 11, my grandmother bought me a diary and I kept writing down the weather
01:39 conditions and I just knew I wanted to be a weather forecaster.
01:43 And I also wanted to combine that burning desire to be a forecaster with my entrepreneurial
01:48 spirit.
01:50 And I've been blessed that AccuWeather is the result of that.
01:54 We've had such a positive impact globally.
01:57 We've saved over 10,000 lives, saved companies tens of billions of dollars, and now have
02:03 an opportunity to contribute in the climate space.
02:05 So you're now Davos man.
02:07 You've been to Davos.
02:08 Any advice for the Davos crowd from what you've heard this week?
02:11 Well, I think a lot of the brilliant people here are talking about the right issues, but
02:16 I think there's more we can do specifically, as I mentioned, to focus on what the warming
02:22 is going to mean, where it's going to be more critical than elsewhere.
02:27 So we're planning the right way rather than just talking about it in general, because
02:30 it's going to be a huge challenge.
02:32 The demand for energy keeps increasing and AI is going to exacerbate that.
02:38 So how do we meet that?
02:40 That's a challenge.
02:41 There's definitely a lot of people working on that, but we can't stop it.
02:45 What already exists, the CO2 and methane in the atmosphere, it continues to increase.
02:50 So how do we understand what that's going to mean and then develop policies and allow
02:55 companies and governments to plan specifically?
02:58 I don't see enough of that.