00:00:00.240 — Intro Kumar The most interesting work on today's hardest problems can't always be distilled into just bullets and books. I'm Kumar Garg. In this podcast, I talk to some of my favorite operators about how they work and how today's biggest problems really get solved. This is tacit knowledge. Music Kumar So today we're talking to Charlotte DeWald. Charlotte is the director of our Arctic Stabilization Initiative at Renaissance Philanthropy, and I find Charlotte's story fascinating. You know, she's, you know, a deep researcher who just kept following her interest in how were we actually going to think hard about the impact the climate is having and all the runaway risks that are emerging in the system and who's doing anything about them, and then just actually just following those threads to the to do list that needs to happen. And that's how we found her. And I think you'll find her story fascinating. And also just a fascinating way to how to find problems worth working on. Music 00:01:18.780 — The Pitch Charlotte Kumar, just really excited for this opportunity. Kumar Charlotte, Let's say you and I bump into each other at a party. I've got resources or something else to help you. And I say, oh, Charlotte, really nice to meet you. Tell me a little bit about what you're working on and, like, why I should be. I should get excited and interested in supporting. Charlotte Okay. Can do. The Arctic Stabilization Initiative is a ARPA-style, five year stage gaited research initiative that is producing the things that governments and multilateral organizations would need to assess the safety, efficacy, and feasibility of Arctic targeted climate interventions. There's a lot to unpack there. And so, um, you know, from what is, what is climate interventions, what is going on in the Arctic? What are the multilateral organizations like? Who is this? Who is the end user here? Um, and I guess the way I like to tell this story is that right now there are a number of, um, planetary thresholds that we are crossing or will cross imminently. And some of those are what are known as tipping points - tipping points are a useful framework for thinking about them, where once you cross a threshold, you can enter into a new state of climate that is not reversible on the timescales of human civilization. And there's a cluster of them, some of the most imminent tipping points in the Arctic. And so the Arctic is like the first test of our capacity as humanity to respond to tipping points. And right now, because of where we are with warming and the processes like sea ice loss and permafrost thaw that are already underway. We just don't have a viable tipping point risk management approach. We have decarbonization. We have mitigation adaptation, carbon dioxide removal. But if these were to scale instantaneously, like tomorrow, Kumar Right Charlotte to the extent that we need, we would still be persisting in this risk threshold zone of Arctic tipping points for a long time just because of these near-term processes that are already underway. And so the Arctic Stabilization Initiative is about what are the Arctic targeted, regionally targeted interventions that could help stabilize the Arctic while the world continues the race to decarbonize. Kumar Part of the reason we do the pitch is I like this, you know, hear it and say it back to you. But here's the piece that, like, jumps out to me about what you're doing. So the way I often say this back to people is if you think about the climate story, lots of people are working on climate change. A huge part of that has been an emphasis on carbon and super pollutants, like it's heating up the planet. We want to do something about it. And so a huge amount of clean energy and other push. There's another push that's happening on adaptation. How do we as a society deal with the fact that, like, there's a heat wave going on across the United States and across Europe, how do we adapt and build systems around it? But then there's this whole other third piece that people don't focus enough on, which is even if we do all that work, we actually have to stabilize the climate. And the climate operates in lots of different areas. And the Arctic is a huge one, which I don't think people think enough about, which is that like right now, the Arctic, a chunk of the time is covered in ice. And then it sort of -that ice melts and these systems are rapidly on a path where, you know, the Arctic could end up being just open water. And then that potentially becomes a huge heat sink. What like blew my mind about like the area you wanted to work on was um, and you had said this to me in one of our chats, which is like, it's the equivalent of putting on a hat, you know, when you're out there in the cold, where you can subtly change the cloud cover over the Arctic in a way that allows it to emit the heat when you should be trying to emit the heat and actually keep the keep the cold air when you're trying to keep the cold air. And that does not require incredibly new technology. We know how to seed clouds and shape clouds. You know, there's obviously testing that needs to happen, but it could have this huge impact on actually protecting the cold of the Arctic. And you know, that has this huge impact because the Arctic is a huge driver of overall climate change. So in my mind, that's like an incredibly interesting science and tech approach to solving stabilization, which is the Arctic really matters. We have possible technologies that could help stabilize the Arctic. It uses something that we might already know. But guess what? Nobody's actually working on it. So do you want to tell a little bit about that piece of it, which is, you know, it's not, you know, until you started working on this, how many people were actually working in this area or why do you think this had been so neglected? Charlotte I'll come to that piece at a time. I think first, it might be helpful context to know a little bit about what the whole idea of, of interventions are and what it means for the Arctic. Um, so if decarbonization, you know, assuming that as we previously set up, that decarbonization and CDR aren't going to be enough to help stabilize Arctic - the core elements of Arctic climate - which are core elements of global climate. Because the sea ice is such a big part of the Earth's reflectivity and and it affects how much heat we transport from the tropics to the mid-latitudes up to the high latitudes. The Arctic is what helps make climate hospitable and livable for so many different populations on Earth, and ranging from how much warmth or warming we're experiencing to how much sea level rise and how much coastal inundation and flooding there is happening. Um, so the things - are what are the things that we're talking about? What could we do to help stabilize the core elements of Arctic climate? We could increase the reflectivity of the atmosphere. We could directly structurally strengthen the integrity of the ice, the ice sheets or the sea ice or and this is the one that I don't think of the folks who are even aware of climate interventions begin with that are folks are the least aware of is that we could do things to increase the emissivity of the atmosphere. That's what you're talking about with the hat. Like you've got a hat. You can take off the hat. Right. And the hat. And then your head gets cooler when you take off the hat. So, um, I think the clouds do a lot of things for climate. And this is, you know, this is at the heart it’s one of the greatest challenges in climate science generally. Um, what are the clouds going to do? How do aerosols like these- it's like this teeny tiny problem of, um, like the nanoscale microscale interactions of aerosols with clouds. And how is that evolve in three minutes? How does that involve in five minutes, ten minutes an hour? Decades, decades from now? Um, this is the core of the greatest uncertainty to climate change. And if I got into this field because I was interested in, you know, what is this gnarly, persistent problem in climate science that's holding us back? And so I was one of thousands of scientists who work on this problem of aerosol cloud interactions. And it turns out that, you know, that these processes, like they are so important for the rest of the world, are really, really important in the Arctic, and they can determine or modulate what happens with these clouds. Are they cooling or are they warming between the brightness and the ice integrity and the emissivity atmosphere. There's a cloud type in the Arctic that is the majority cloud type. It's like 60% of Arctic clouds are this cloud type, but they're called mixed phase clouds. They have both liquid and ice. And a lot of the - there's you know, there's sparse observations of the Arctic. But we do have many different scientific campaigns that have shown that - I don't wanna say many. Like, let's say, uh, at least three. I can think of icebreaker campaigns that have shown that these clouds are warming a lot of the air more than they are cooling, and that's because they're near the surface. They're like that hat. They're just. And also because, um, there's seasons of the year where there just isn't a whole lot of sunlight to reflect. And so they're net impact is warming. Um, and so if you want to release that heat from the surface, the concept is that you could in a very targeted, regionally targeted way, you could then or dissipate the clouds by nudging them into ice formation, which can ultimately increase their efficiency and precipitation. Kumar Which is such a cool idea. So let's go back to that conversation. I think I'm very curious as to how, you know, you sort of ended up having this thread that you were pulling on, which is that, oh, there's potentially, you know, clouds matter. You know, I think this has been percolating for people who track climate science, like clouds are more important than we think, than pulling on the thread of, oh, we can actually change cloud mix. That by itself is sort of interesting. And then, oh, actually changing cloud mix in the Arctic could have this like really outsized impact on a system that matters a lot comparatively to any other system when it comes to net global climate change. So how did you sort of put these different? It's like a you know, it's like eventually in the movie where like all the clues come together and you're like, aha. Charlotte Some of it is, is luck. I just happen to be in this very niche area of aerosol cloud interaction science that gave me exposure to this topic. Um, and that is the topic of these. They're called ice-nucleating particles. And they're extremely rare particles that naturally occur from the ocean surface or from deserts. And they loft into the atmosphere, get into clouds, and then they can trigger ice formation at really warm temperatures, like 30°C above the freezing point of water. It's crazy. And so I, um, over the past, you know, decade, I developed instrumentation. I would go out to sea and I would measure these things. And I also worked with modelers at National labs on how to increase the fidelity of our representations of these things. So I had a lot of exposure, like broad exposure across folks working from different perspectives on on aerosol cloud interactions. And I just really like to talk to people. And so and, you know, I, I guess I'm just naturally an extrovert. And I like to call you up on the phone and ask them what they think about things. And so when I started to think about, you know, I heard of the concept of mixed phase cloud thinning and I, um, had my ice-nucleation background at the core. You know, underpinning of mixed phase cloud thinning is ice-nucleation. So I just knew exactly who to call to ask. And you start pressure testing this idea and say like, okay, if we were, you know, is there something here? What would what would it entail? What would the research agenda entail, and what are the core uncertainties? How would you piece them together? What are their dependencies? How would you execute that on time? And so, um, because I like to talk to people and because I know who to call and I knew who, um, how to facilitate this conversation, I could pull tell everybody together and and to understand whether or not there was, um, a real something that we could deliver in a five year timescale and what that would be. Kumar So there is something - one is like the desire to like, ask and the willingness to call. But there's also like the - I feel like sometimes people fall down this trap of like, well, surely somebody else smart must have thought of this, looked into it, and it's probably a dead end. That's why no one has done this. And I often find that, like the people who are willing to be like, they don't just presume that the thing that is pulling on them, like, maybe there's something here, they actually go ask because a huge number of the times, like no one has ever asked, you know, like the old joke, no one is coming. Like there's no one who's actually looked. So you might be the first person. So what gave you that sense of like, it's not like, oh, someone's already covered this ground. Uh, but like, I'm just going to keep asking questions until I figure out whether this is a dead end or this is promising. Charlotte All along the way in this field of, you know, being on the frontier of something, there's a lot, you know, whether we're talking to - to potential funders or whether we're talking to scientists, there's all kinds of other stakeholders. There's a lot of hesitance, and for good reason. There's a there's a lot of skepticism and like, healthy, um, yeah, just healthy skepticism about the possibility and the complexities that will come with climate interventions. So I think just kind of having this experience of taking a lot of risks early on and then just being - having a some high level of tolerance for, for risk and uncertainty, um, that I think is what helped me get over this, um, this skepticism and move into more curiosity about the possibility. Kumar I like that. So but pull on that more. So I feel like one thing that distinguishes you is also just being like, quite open to, like, building your own professional path, right? You weren’t to like, oh, I, I'm an expert in this area. Therefore I should be an assistant professor and then I should be a professor, and then I should have a lab. You were like, I'm interested in these topics. I'm becoming very adept. I'm on the frontier. But being on the frontier means I'm going to follow things where they go and just talk a little bit about that because, like, even the time when you and I chatted the first time, like you were like, well, I want to plunge ahead into this new thing. And you had a lot of questions, but you were like, plunging ahead. Charlotte I guess I'm going to talk about like what - How I just operate on a very fundamental level and try to map it to your question, which is I think there's like two things that really hold people back. And I think it affects like our cognitive capacity as a species. Um, and one is fear of fear of failure or fear of disappointing people. All the things that are, you know, predictable as. As humans. Um, and and so that's why I was talking a lot about risk tolerance is, um, so I guess a good example of that is in this situation. Right? I was going along this the my career in science and I was having a fantastic time. Kumar Mmm-hmmm Charlotte It's just I think there's something about science that really aligns with the human like the way human brains like to operate, and just asking questions and answering them and not knowing what's the next step is so right. So some of what you're talking about is actually inherent in what career of science anyway. Um, but and there was a push factor out of, out of science too, which is that I just don't there's a lot of about the infrastructure around science that I don't think, um, is I think it's quite limiting for people. Like, for example, if you're working in a national lab, you have to map, you have to you have to fit in a box and whatever. So maybe you have a great question, but you can't pursue it because it doesn't fit in the the program box. Kumar Right. Charlotte Um, there's all kinds of there's so many examples of that. Um, and then just being, you know, I'm in my 30s, I have young children, I'm a mom. There's so many things about a career that has been mapped to, like the single family household that just doesn't really work. And so work for work for people like me who are, um, mid-career, have kids and, um, can't move around for a postdoc every two years, that sort of thing. Kumar Right. Charlotte And so those were there were these push factors. But then also, you know, coming back to just having a high tolerance for risk and liking to talk to people. I was really uncomfortable with the pace at which we were working on these really critical problems, like aerosol cloud interactions, trying to constrain the uncertainty associated with aerosol cloud interactions, because I guess, you know, the my original motivation for going in this career was that, okay, if we just have better if we just understand climate better, then we'll take we'll be able to take action. Maybe it's just that people can't plan around things that they don't understand. So let's just, you know, increase our understanding. And then that wasn't really panning out. And so ten years went by and I thought man, like, okay, we've incrementally increased our understanding of the big questions here. But like this hasn't really affected the rate at what action is being taken. And we're approaching some really critical thresholds. So there was all these different push factors that were pushing me out to like be uncomfortable, like in my general career infrastructure loving, science loving uncertainty of following these different questions, loving the community, but then also just being deeply uncomfortable with the pace at which climate action was happening and how out of touch that was with the rate at which we were approaching an era of non-linear response to climate change. And so those things, I think, pushed me toward, um, okay, who's doing who's who is thinking about this? Is anybody thinking about this? And that was what wound me around, like the phone call networking that you do. And that's how I ultimately connected with Joshua Elliott. And that's why that's how I ended up here. Kumar You could always think about the other side of it, but you didn't. It wasn't like, oh, I've got kids, so I need to figure out something super stable. Instead, it was like, I don't want to be locked in. I want to, like, actually get to the most important work. And I'm going to, like, keep asking all. I'm going to use that those questions and that conversation to lead to the next thing. And I don't know. We're like living in these questions. We're like, oh, maybe AI will do everything. And you know, and I'm like, every single thing you've told me about, oh, I then knew the right person to call. And I asked them and then I figured out this thing and then this part was hard. You know, it's like a bunch of things that, uh, we're still going to need, uh, super motivated humans to sort of figure out. 00:19:55.980 Tacit Knowledge Kumar So what we call the podcast tacit knowledge. Is there a piece of tacit knowledge that you love to share with people? When people come to you for advice? They're like, this is the thing that I never see written down, but I'm constantly sort of drawing upon and being able to get things done. Charlotte My husband was just talking to me about this yesterday. He was saying, you know, I like to get on YouTube and watch - he's a mechanical engineer. He's incredible. Like he prototypes, he can prototype anything. Like, so like you're 0 to 1. This is the guy. But he gets on YouTube and he's always learning about new tools and how to use them. And he says that's like what you do, but with just general skills and people. And so and people are the way there's so much that there's a lot you can unlock with a tool, but there's so much you can unlock with a person. Kumar From the perspective of a field builder, then who would you love to sort of pull in if they're listening? For example. Charlotte There's a couple of different kinds of people that I'm looking for. Um, when I'm thinking about the field and how we want it, how we want to mobilize people towards this direction of, like, the end game of ASI. Um, and that is someone who can think programmatically, like someone who has this broad sense of, okay, here's all the different stuff that's going on in the community. Um, here are some really effective ways that we could convene and like questions. So here are the core questions. We could convene them around. And also here's here's like a great modality for how to do that. Like someone who can really think programmatically like that. My scientific advisory board is really, really good at this. And, um, that's just been a joy because that's exactly what I, what I needed to, um, to move ASI forward. And then, um, there's also folks who are really entrepreneurial about, okay, here's this key bottleneck. Uh, I've got an idea for a sensor that could address that bottleneck, and that's that's somebody else who can, like, go really deep on a particular topic. So there's, you know, it's a, it's a mix of, of shapes of people that you want to look for. But I think like the thing that was really different about how we started out, um, from other organizations in the field is that I was thinking about - because these Ren Phil funds and ASI is no different. We have - we're all oriented around this end game. Like what is what are you going to do? What is the hand off at the end? And so when I was thinking deeply about that, I just did what I do, which is what I've been talking about this whole time, is I called up people I know, and one of them was a, a he's a US diplomat and he was like the main envoy to the UN for East Africa, USAID. And I just wanted to know I just wanted his general perspectives about like, how I was thinking about the endgame and how would one go about that. And then just in that conversation, it became so clear to me that I needed this diplomacy skill set on my team Kumar Mhm. Charlotte To help define like who is going to take this thing that we're developing. And because the whole, you know, we can talk about what the goal is. But I needed to know who the end user was going to be and the pathway to them. And then and I think that was different than like a different approach to starting out and building a team and really, really clearly defining what that end goal was that was in part facilitated by the emphasis that we have here at Ren Phil on what the end game is. Kumar And is there a piece of tacit knowledge you want to get better at? Like what is what's on your like strive for, develop list? Charlotte I'm really into, um, this idea of negotiating right now. I read this, it's a really popular book. I think it's yeah, it's a Chris Voss. Never split the difference. And there's just so much in life. Everything is in negotiation. Uh, yeah. So I think about those a lot, and I'm always trying to practice those skills to. 00:23:53.190 Asks and Offers Kumar All right. So final section we always do asks and offers. So um, you know, are there particular things that are offers. You know, as in, you know, like ideas you have of things that they can use or ask that you have of the world, things they would, would be helpful to you. And as you're sort of building out, uh, the Arctic work. Charlotte One of the things I'm really curious about right now is this world of conservation. And I'm I'm interested in the priorities of folks who think deeply about ice-nucleating particles. And I want to, um, one, I want to convene some folks and get some and listen to understand, like, what are the priorities of folks in this area? Because I think there's a lot of alignment. Um, but I can also see that there's there's a lot of room for reactions to the risks that come from climate interventions and also the, um, the research. So. Kumar Right. Charlotte Um, I'm interested in talking to folks and conservation for perspectives on that. Yeah. We're talking a lot about bottlenecks. Um, there's a lot of really ambitious science that needs to happen. So I'm always wanting to hear from folks who are thinking about, oh, you know, here's, here's a sampling platform that I, you know, we're working on. Um, this guy called me up because he had, uh, I was working on airships for the Arctic and thought, okay, this might be maybe there's an application for this, um, that really, uh, you know, and I don't know exactly where this conversation is going to go, but just the the fact that folks are thinking about how to apply some technology that they're developing to problems of Arctic clouds and climate interventions, I always love those conversations. Kumar If folks are trying to. Charlotte, follow your work, follow ASI, see where all can they follow you. Charlotte I am on Substack and I'm on LinkedIn, and I'm working on getting some more robust channels of communication out there. Kumar We'll put this out and then also give people, folks, ways to follow up. I'm usually thankful for everything you're doing, and I hope lots of people follow up and and offer their help. Charlotte Thanks so much, Kumar. It was great to be here. Good to chat. 00:26:03.040 — Outro Kumar All right. So that was a conversation with Charlotte Dewald. Uh, as you can probably tell, I'm like a huge Charlotte fan. Uh, part of what I just love about her is just that, like, she meets all my criteria of people I get excited about. She's like a deep nerd, like, thought about the area that she cares about so deeply, but then has such an agentic spirit. You know, like, how am I not just going to think really hard about it, but like, the world needs people to actually make things happen and taking the energy to them and say, okay, I'm just going to like, call people and figure out should this be the next thing that happens. She has just been figuring this out one step at a time, and I think, like we'll all be better for it, but it's just that spirit of, you know, it's not going to be written down anywhere, but there are people of goodwill who can help you. And like, ultimately, what we're going to be graded on is whether we get anything done and like, and so we should be trying to do that. So I loved her sense of impatience, curiosity, like kind of ambition, but also just this, like this. Like we're working, I want to learn and then I want to figure out, and I'm going to do the next thing. I think it like, it just gives me a sense, like we can all carry that. And it's just I hope more people carry that spirit. And you know, Charlotte is, I think, also very friendly to talk to. So if you ever reach out to her, I'm sure she will be up for chatting and I think she wants help. So as Charlotte said, follow her on LinkedIn. We're going to include a link in our show notes. Um, you know, she has lots of people, whether it's diplomats or others, that you would love to be pulling into the work. Certainly more technologists. I think this is a burgeoning area that will matter a lot. I think you're going to hear about this area work more and more. The thing I want you to leave you with is, you know, Charlotte is having an incredibly interesting career, will continue to be interesting, but what makes it interesting is just her willingness to go where the problem is and find solutions. So I want, you know, that you find inspiring. Think about the problems that you want to solve and what the next steps there, and whether that's with us or somewhere else. I hope you take this as inspiration and get out there. Music Thanks for listening to this latest episode of Tacit Knowledge, hosted by me, Kumar Garg and produced by All Together Now for Renaissance Philanthropy. Find out more about our guest and all of our work at RenaissancePhilanthrop.org. Until next time.