“For some countries it may be a matter of mopping the floor, but not for us and not for the world in general,” says Sybren Drijfhout at the end of the third episode of the KNMI podcast. “I think we still have a very good chance of keeping it under one meter, even half a meter before the end of the century. […] There really is still everything to fight for.”
Drijfhout is an oceanographer at the KNMI. He knows everything there is to know about sea level rise, you can hear that straight away. Although much is still unknown and uncertain, especially about Antarctica, he says. The fact that he believes the Netherlands still has a good chance gives courage.
In four half-hour episodes, the KNMI podcast highlights the recently published climate scenarios for the Netherlands. There are four scenarios. Two for high greenhouse gas emissions and two for low emissions. At high and low there is a variant with a ‘watering’ Netherlands and a ‘drying’ Netherlands.
The KNMI supercomputer calculated the scenarios for two years and forty researchers worked on them. Turn that into an attractive podcast.
We succeeded, although the struggle with the amount of information can also be heard. Each episode follows a season. In spring it is about drought, in summer about heat and showers, autumn is about sea level rise and for winter the question is how many days of frost there will be. The information density is high, but fortunately it is not overloaded with figures. The seasons framework keeps things manageable.
The voice-over is less so. It sounds like a government information brochure – which it actually is, but that is probably not the intention. This especially does not work well at times when the tight voice-over asks questions that the experts clearly answer in a different setting.
Off the cuff
The experts are the great strength of the podcast, and the reason to listen. They talk with knowledge, and the fact that they seem to talk extemporaneously at the same time makes it pleasant to listen to.
For example, Peter Siegmund talks about the number of frost days. A few decades ago, 80 frost days a year was still quite normal, now there are only 50. “I don’t want to cancel skating completely, but it is becoming increasingly difficult,” says Siegmund. Then he quickly explains some complicated mechanisms in a few sentences. “It is getting warmer because the earth is warming up, there is more to it than that during frosty days. The Northern Hemisphere has a lot of land, which is warming faster than the sea. In addition, the coldest winds, which come from the North, warm up strongly. And they occur less often.”
After four episodes something is nagging. Why do Drijfhout and his colleagues always end on such a positive note? The KNMI wants to get the Netherlands into action and above all not to paralyze it, as is evident from all communications surrounding the scenarios. But one after the other, the perspectives sound sought after and the alarm bells sound quite soft.