The rotten core of the new IPCC report
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- Опубликовано: 8 апр 2022
- The IPCC have finally released the Working Group 3 report, detailing how we can combat climate change. Unfortunately there is a rotten core to it...
- Read the IPCC WG3 report: report.ipcc.ch/ar6wg3/pdf/IPC...
- Miriam and Adam's video: • The IPCC mitigation re...
- Drawdown: geni.us/drawdown
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To be clear the new IPCC report is mostly a comprehensive account of what we can do to stop climate change, and contains the latest research on how we can use technology and policy effectively. Some of the chapters in the full report are actually quite radical!
What I'm focusing on in this video is what I fear will be the talking point techbros and fossil fuel lobbyists will seize on - the use of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technology to prolong the burning of fossil fuels. Do I see their economic argument? Of course. Do I think it's a bad argument? Absolutely. We're talking about keeping the planet habitable, and anything that obfuscates the action necessary to do so is dangerous and should be shunned. As I say in the video, we will almost certainly need to make use of CDR technology later this century to offset unavoidable emissions, and even to lower CO2 concentrations, but this is not something that should be factoring into our decisions right now. Right now we need to keep the carbon in the ground, which means not burning fossil fuels. Simple as.
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Edited by Luke Negus.
This video is about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and their Working Group 3 report as part of AR6. I talk about the good news from the IPCC - wind and solar are cheaper than ever and used more and more, and climate policy works! But the report also dedicates a lot of time to talking about carbon capture and storage (CCS), carbon dioxide removal (CDR), and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). In my opinion this discussion only gifts a talking point to fossil fuel companies and will delay the necessary decoupling of society from coal, oil, and natural gas.
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The most disheartening line in the technical summary was where they conceded that, although climate advocacy has risen to promising levels in recent years, there's so far no evidence that public opinion on climate change has any effect on reducing emissions. It was a real "what are we doing here?" moment reading that...
Given the dynamics of how policy implementation works across the world, much like how the climate reaches tipping points, policy does as well. Supreme court decisions setting a precedent that gets reinforced at larger scales is such an example.
It was only through advocacy that (mostly European) nations massively subsidized the research and development of green energy to the point that solar and wind can often beat coal and methane and nuclear on cost. That has had an impact, and will continue to do more every year.
Public opinion =\= advocacy.
@@Prodigi50 "There is no conclusive evidence that an increase in engagement results in
overall pro-mitigation outcomes" (technical summary table TS1)
That's what I'm referencing. It's disheartening but I'm not saying we should just give up because of it. I just wish the movement was more militant...
capitalism will kill us all.
I feel like there are some similarities to be made here with carbon capture and plastic recycling.
"Oh don't worry, we can _technically_ recycle/capture _some_ plastics/carbon, so it's fine to keep using it"
They are going to shift to that mode of thinking simply because that pie-in-the-sky scenario is the one that allows corporations to function as-is, and no one can stop it because everything is set for that exact plan to happen and no person, group of people, or committee will be able to stop those initiatives.
@@thecommentator9181 If we are completely honest with ourselves, deep down we already know we are fucked. Humans don't care about the environment, they care about themselves.
0.04 % of CO2 does not control the climate of this planet. Solar Cycle, Magnetosphere, Jetstream, pole shift.
I've noticed the people who say that aren't the same people who are recycling their plastics.
It might get to that point, and I'm sure there is the occasional person with that mindset, but carbon capture development is new enough that its still mostly filled with hopeful people who have good ideas and high hopes, but haven't yet really come to grips the futility of their ideas.
Not that those projects are bad - every little bit helps, and of a few tons can be offset here and there then that's fantastic for local economies. Its just not going to be anywhere near enough to offset emissions on a global scale.
If I remember correctly, I calculated that we'd need something like 9 million carbon capture facilities to even make a dent. Now that's definitely a lot, but its not an unmanageable amount spread around the world. The bigger problem is that they have diminishing returns - we can only build them so high and sure we can capture a lot of carbon at ground level, but there's still a whole shitload in the higher altitudes that will take years or centuries to cycle down to the height of these machines. Meanwhile, the ground level will be scrubbed fairly clean of CO2 leading to (potential) problems with things like plant growth if the machines are too efficient.
One other thing to note: There are two technologies called carbon capture: Atmospheric carbon capture (what we're talking about here) and direct carbon capture (installed in a plant's output stacks where its directly in the flow of the gasses being emitted). Direct carbon capture can do a _lot_ more toward cleaning up our problem. Not a complete solution by any means, but way more - simply because its able to attack the problem while the pollutants are concentrated and doesn't have to try and scour the entire planet's atmosphere for particles.
Unfortunately it costs money to install those, and its an additional ongoing expense for maintenance and whatnot that plants currently don't have to deal with, and so far most governments have been somewhat slow to regulate the devices. So adoption has been very slow. Its likely something we'll see being required within the next decade or so as countries try to reduce their CO2 output as much as possible without disrupting industry any more than they have to - and in the grand scheme of things, one more device in a typically enormous and complex plant is not _that_ big of a disruption - certainly not when compared to shutting the plant down entirely.
Hi, Masters Student in Environmental Science here. The framing of carbon capture in this report is definitely frustrating, but I think it is important to recognize the real need for investment into and creation of carbon capture facilities. This is due to a concept called “legacy carbon” or carbon that we have already put into the atmosphere and, because our natural methods of sequestration are already overtaxed, will remain in the atmosphere for centuries. To ensure good environmental outcomes we can’t simply stop at carbon neutral, but continue to carbon negative, and carbon capture is one of the more effective, albeit expensive, strategies to achieve this goal. I totally agree with Simon’s assertation though, that using carbon capture to uphold the status quo in terms of our reliance on fossil fuels, would be disastrous.
Wouldn't manufacturing the CCS facilities also release carbon into the atmosphere? Depending on how effective they are, wouldn't it also take a rather long time for them to begin actually removing any of the carbon other than what was emitted for their own construction?
Not disagreeing with you here, just wondering whether this should be our top priority right now or whether capturing carbon by planting forests and protecting marshes would be more effective
@@mcsheyn6746 No, you are very much correct! We should be pursuing forest/marshes/ocean seaweed planting alongside the building of long-term capture facilities. The rapid sequestration from planting helps to offset the greenhouse gasses created while building carbon capture, and the better storage capacity of carbon capture will help to improve our storage abilities in the long run. A multi-faceted approach will be the most effective in both curbing our current output of greenhouse gasses and getting us closer to being carbon-negative. This is sort of similar to how we should be investing in wind and solar alongside nuclear energy.
Rewilding is a completely underestimated tool imo. We can restore nature and improve farming sustainability at the same time, without a reduction in productivity.
Wild Ennerdale (UK) is probably my favourite project, but I know of others in places like Costa Rica too.
There is no existing technology that does CCS at atmospheric concentrations in a way that is efficient enough to be scalable. Remember that these machines have to be powered at the same time we are ending the use of coal, natural gas and oil power plants. Energy will be in short supply and technology that requires a lot of it won't be viable. A Nature article from 22 July 2019 with lead author Giulia Realmonte sets out just how energy expensive this tech is and predicts that by 2100 it will use a quarter of the world's energy. There's no way we will be prioritizing DAC CCS high enough to spend that much energy on it. www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10842-5
Oh what I wouldn't give to be young and optimistic again! Come back in 5 or 10 years after working in the field and let us know your thoughts then.
Physicist Tobey Maguire is right. They can’t keep getting away with it.
Spiderman is always right
And you're going to stop China how?
@@engineeringvision9507 It's spiderman. He can stop china however he wants, whenever he wants.
@@engineeringvision9507 We should stop the the U.S first
@Sam Bourgeois Actually I don't need to have an excuse to do nothing about climate change. I'm extremely environmentally friendly but I'm looking at ways I can increase my carbon footprint for political reasons, mostly to spite people like you tbh :)
If we emphatically reject the notion that DAC is possible, we have to emphatically reject the notion that 1.5C is possible
Do you include enhanced weathering as DAC?
@@Martin-po9sz I guess so? It's capturing CO2 directly from the air after all. But I'm not advocating against it, I think silicate seeding of rivers and oceans is an incredibly promising and understudied geoengineering technique. It very elegantly solves the source of climate change and reverses ocean acidification simultaneously. There have been reports (pretty old now though and with rather back-of-the-envelope calculations) that have suggested we could sequester global emissions that way for only a few trillion dollars a year. Of course, It'd probably wreak havoc on freshwater and coastal ecosystems, and if done without regard for environmental justice it could destroy local communities to a genocidal level, and in general no sequestration scheme could be seen as an alternative to reducing emissions
But I'm more talking about how the IPCC continues to cling to the possibility that 1.5C is a feasible or even physically possible warming target to reach. At some point they need to concede that it's not and make every policy-maker in the world come to terms with what that means for the future of humanity. People need to be freaking out, and seeing an impossible low-emissions scenario on every graph of projected warming gives politicians and the public an excuse to think it might all be ok. That's why I don't like it.
1.5C is long gone. Maybe over the long term we can think about bringing it back down to that...
Simon, I love that you've undermined and exposed a potential conflict of interest between an industry and an intergovernmental group. Till now we all could hold the IPCC with a generally good level of objectivity, but this report and video are a good reminder of how that level can change
Around 6:20 however, you mention how individual action won't "help us solve this problem." You cite this IPCC report as evidence showing how effective policy can make big impacts towards stopping climate change. I still don't think this is a reason against individual/grassroots action, and I think that action can be just as important if organized in a similar way to policy/governmental action.
Solving the problem from the top-down *AND* from the bottom-up is a completely valid solution path. We can make changes in our own lives *AND* still vote for the right people.
Fossil fuels underpin so many parts of the economy. Not only do coal, oil, and natural gas dominate the energy sector, oil and natural gas contribute to plastic production which is rampant across the consumer portion of the economy. Most vegan stuff, if not produce and jarred goods, is packaged in plastic. Even looking away from food, clothing, large goods like refirgerators, and palletized units are either entirely made of plastic or wrapped in it to minimize damage during transport. Unless those same products or that same packaging is transitioned towards more sustainable supply streams, where we can have true green plastic that comes from biotic factors and can be used by biotic factors, we are merely shifting the pollution of fossil fuels from damaging the climate to damaging the biosphere, including humans.
The documentary "The Story of Plastic", directed and written by Deia Schlosberg and captured in association with the Break Free From Plastic movement, echoes this in covering how the fossil fuel & chemical industries are pivoting away from energy to plastic by ramping up production in plastic plants.
I'm sorry but I don't think it's enough to sit around as individuals, consuming things how we've always consumed them, while telling others to make the changes for us. Policy is slow, and even though it's looking to be effective in curbing climate change, I'm much more skeptical of it curbing plastic reliance in the economy.
The reality is that we can make change in parallel.
We can rethink the ways we get around, like using EVs or bikes or public transit like trains and buses.
We can rethink the environments we live in by choosing to either move to urban, walkable, bikeable cities and towns, or again, top-down and bottom-up, influencing the legislature near where we live so that those kinds of spaces can be built.
We can absolutely rethink the ways we eat by choosing to eat vegan, or to eat much less meat/dairy than how we have in the past.
We can rethink how we do finance by selecting banks, institutions, stocks, index funds, etc. that divest in fossil fuels and that transparently disclose investments in other sectors.
We can rethink the clothing we buy by being conscience of the materials that go into their production, by recognizing the vast resale resources in our vicinity, and by dropping the fetishes we have of collecting shoes and whatnot.
We can rethink the way we build houses and apartments and buildings by paying attention to the materials that go into them, and selecting materials from sources like reclaimed construction, or building methods like PassiveHaus and LEED.
Not all of these things will be possible or feasible for a lot of people, but there are many facets of life, most of which I didn't mention, where we can reorient and progress towards sustainability. Politics is one piece of that
Buying less stuff is possibly the best thing any American can do on an individual level.
Stop buying clothes unless you need them. Stop buying new gadgets. Stop buying random consumer goods. Stop "upgrading". Stop buying new cars. Stop buying unnecessary food. Etc, etc.
Learn to be content with what you have. Turn your ambitions towards doing/experiencing/learning/reading more.
@@___.51 Emphasis on need.
If you need a good pair of shoes to go running or to compete in a race that benefits an organization or cause important to you, then that's absolutely a perfect reason to get those shoes.
But to buy new shoes just because the ones from last week look old, I wouldn't say that's a good reason or need.
Substitute shoes with anything else and that which you have a good reason to buy it. Yes that good reason can mean pleasure, but not excessive pleasure.
@@___.51 I agree with you 100%, the only exception I'd have is if one is upgrading an appliance/electronic equipment/lightbulb to something that is significantly more efficient.
For example, I swapped out all of my 100W incandescent bulbs for 5W LED bulbs, upgraded my old desktop that consumed 300W with an HTPC that uses 50W - 70W, and swapped my plasma tv that consumed 400W with an LED tv that uses 100W.
I can't do much, but I can do something. That something is what matters.
Fantastic comment. Thank you for the insight.
My opinion of carbon capture is:
Reduce first, capture later.
Capturing carbon from the atmosphere is a great thing as long as it is implemented to reduce the amount of carbon already in the atmosphere IN ADDITION to our attempts to stop new green house gases getting there, when it is used to allow more gases to the atmosphere it is defeating its purpose.
@@thecommentator9181 Exactly, using it to maintain carbon emissions is defeating its purpose.
Carbon capture is required for negative emissions for the carbon budget but the oil corporations and governments are trying to escape their responsibilities there.
Republicans are gonna love that ONE SECTION in a 3 part report
This is why you don't do that shit
Unfortunately, they'll also love thumbnails of videos like this one claiming the report has a "rotten core". It's one sentence from a massive report.
For me it wasn't the carbon capture, but in fact the lack of mentioning degrowth. It's very difficult to imagine the economic predictions in the WG3 report to be compatible with the necessary emissions reductions.
Nah we can keep growing. Tech is just getting better and more efficient.
In the modern developed world growth is largely about intangibles. Growth doesn't equate to "more stuff" in the same way it used to.
De-Growth is the most anti human thing that I’ve ever heard. If we would have economic de-growth we would have massive social challenges and civil war. More poor people and nobody would care anymore about the environment.
That tech salvation attitude will only end in our destruction. We already have all the tech necessary to solve our problems.
I would love that you one day give a lecture on precisely this, and then record it to for example your patreons or something. I could see a really good talk brewing with your interest in this topic and I can see you also going way more in depth into this topic than you possibly could in a 10 minute youtube video. I would really enjoy that. When you do don't forget to advertise it a bit so that it won't be left unnoticed!
Lookup Beril Sirmacek & Guy McPherson.
Information should be free, especially quality information
@@TheDoomWizard Guy McPherson is EXACTLY the type of alarmist the deniers talk about. He predicts our doom in the very near future.
It’s worrisome that other educated people listen to him
It's amazing how much easier this problem would be if short-sighted, greedy people weren't obstructing every step of the way.
They have the data and the statistics. You'd think that they would want to live on a habitable planet for at least another 50 years but I guess they're determined to get rich quick and die before they need to deal with the repurcussions.
This is such a narrow interpretation of climate change, you are framing it as if this secret elite group is just being selfish for the sake of it. We are ALL responsible for climate change, we all use these resources. I hate how people try pin the blame on some huge company when that company wouldn't exist if we didn't bloody buy all their stuff.
Greed is harder to solve than global warming and dark energy.
@@MrKornnugget Would be a step forward if our way to do business wouldn’t incentivize it.
@@MrKornnugget I'm pretty sure, if we can solve dark energy, with enough time, we can use that knowledge to generate enough energy to satisfy everybody's greed.
@@scifino1 You can't satisfy greed
3:03 "Depending on its availability, CCS could allow fossil fuels to be used longer, reducing stranded assets"
Although your cynical interpretation is not unfounded, there's a positive way to interpret this, too.
If cheaper CCS would benefit the profitability of the fossil fuel industry, they now have an incentive to support its development!
(via investments, not lobbying against it, lobbying in favor of it, promoting public support for it, etc)
Let's put those dirty dollars to work for something good, for once...
When we have that technology, the future generations can decide whether to use it to compensate for continued fossil fuel use and to ease the transition, or to use it to bring the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere further down (back to a 1°C level, perhaps?).
In other words, that sentence is a carrot that we can use to 'corrupt' the corruption 🙃
Let's really put those dirty dollars to use by taking it from them and directly investing it in R&D so we don't have to wait for some oil executives to come around to the idea that ending their own industry is good actually.
@counselthyself Oh so we are even more dependent on a resource that's killing the planet than I previously thought? And because past generations have totally uncritically woven fossil oil into every fabric of our lives? (and bodies too btw) Meaning it will be even harder to switch away from fossil fuels than previously thought?
Oh good good, I feel totally safe now. Glad you cleared that up
Honestly, what are you even trying to say? Switching away is a lot of bother so let's just not even try? How does that solve anything?
Next time you're going to be all smug, at least make sense. That's all I'm asking
It'd be nice to have a political system where voting had the power it's advertised as supposed to have.
word.
Exactly, if only you had total dictatorial power then everything would be wonderful *sarcasm*
@@engineeringvision9507 no one is talking about dictatorial power, just actual representation instead of living under a corporatocracy.
Problem is: Lots of people are stupid and selfish
@@alphamohamedk because the society raised us to be that way. I'm not saying humans are infinitely "plastic" or can develop in any way we want, but just saying "people are greedy, that's just human nature" is not possible, because we've only experienced human nature under the conditions of the age we live in. That would be like me saying "People are inherently Islamophobic, because I was raised in a time and place where everyone around me was Islamophobic" for instance.
What is your take on Kurzgesagt's most recent video on the same topic? Next to your own video here, it struck me as more optimistic so I wondered how you felt about it?
I thought the same
I watched it too and it was a terrible video. It falsely made it seem as though we only have two choices:
1) Accept that there are positive developments and that by voting correctly and through personal consumer choices, we can trust that this climate issue will slowly resolve over time
2) Accept total doomerism, be depressed and do nothing.
What's conspicuously missing here is a third, much more obvious option (to me at least)
3) the people of the world organize, we do collective activism like how they did during the civil rights era in America, ending apartheid in South Africa or ending colonialism in India and we collectively FORCE the corporations and governments into doing what must be done.
The more commentators make it seem option 1 is the only correct answer, the less likely it is that people will consider the option 3 and organize themselves. In this way, Kurtzgesagd's video is actively doing harm to the planet.
I would much more recommend Wisecrack's latest video on 'the End of the World', they did a much better job.
@counselthyself ok I'll certainly stop listening to you then in that case
Actually, without carbon capture, there's already no pathway to avoiding 1.5C and probably no pathway to avoiding 2C. The values you show of temperatures by 2100 assume carbon capture.
I think the metrics in the IPCC reports, and in the solutions laid out by Project Drawdown by Drawdown Labs, would disagree with you.
Natural ecosystems already do CC&S pretty effectively. Problem is that so much land in the world has been stripped of biology, and with it that CC&S power
I agree that carbon capture isn't a panacea, but does the report talk about direct capture or point capture? The latter is more technologically mature and can play a role in reducing emissions according to multiple studies that simulate transition scenarios... It is also useful to consider multiple options in case the best option isn't politically viable
Didn't Kurzgesagt make a video on carbon capture? Like over a year ago? And concluded that it was very much a last chance solution that really shouldn't be relied on? Why is it in an IPCC report I hate it here
Guess they figure governments aren’t doing enough so might as well get a head start on the last chance solution.
@@thecommentator9181 yeah, no.
_”When we look at the evidence, it's increasingly clear that the pace of adaptation across the globe is not enough to keep up with the pace of climate change,"_ said Mark Howden, a climate scientist at Australian National University and vice chair of the IPCC's Working Group II.
@@thecommentator9181 Also directly from the IPCC: sr15/chapter/chapter-4/
_"Current national pledges on mitigation and adaptation are not enough to stay below .... While transitions in energy efficiency, carbon intensity of fuels, electrification and land-use change are underway in various countries, limiting warming to 1.5°C will require a greater scale and pace of change ...._
_Although multiple communities around the world are demonstrating the _*_possibility_*_ of implementation consistent with 1.5°C pathways {Boxes 4.1-4.10}, very few countries, regions, cities, communities or businesses can currently make such a claim (high confidence). To strengthen the global response, almost all countries would need to significantly raise their level of ambition"_
@@thecommentator9181 _"Did I say they're doing enough? "_ - no the IPCC said current policy isnt doing enough/ isn’t implemented enough, which is the basis of my original statement. You said "no thats not it" and went on a different tangent.
_"what I'm saying is that policies have worked to reduce the overall result of the climate crisis"_ Yeah, not enough though, according to IPCC, nor implemented enough.
_"And carbon capture has to stay off the options of how to reduce emissions until we do so by other means"_ - the IPCC report only looks to expand options as current initiatives have been proven to be insufficient. If the result is that it turns out is unsafe, ineffective, so be it, at least they looked into it and expended that option. When the planet is at stake, and there is a distinct lack of action, its better to have more options on the table than not.
_"Please stop trying to be right for the sake of it."_ what do you mean by this? A persons posed a question, i gave reasoning that aligns with what the IPCC is saying. You have not provided any alternative hypothesis, other than saying i am wrong without any justification or reason. I then directly quoted the IPCC as evidence for my statement.
No, it would seem you are trying to win an argument without any reason, counter argument or supporting evidence.
@@thecommentator9181 _"I said that's not right because carbon capture as of now ISN'T a solution rn"_ - I never said it was, nor does the IPCC. Hence the whole purpose of the paper to outline what needs to happen for it to be viable, its certainly NOT saying that CCS is a substitutive solution if thats what you are assuming? in fact the IPCC states quite clearly that with current tech, CSS is costly and yields marginal returns compared to other current solutions, but not as bad as other current solutions such as hydroelectric.
_"I literally addressed that and the solution is to be more ambitious"_ actually you didnt, you are only starting to address that point now, however it still does not address the original position at all. Making a statement without any reason or evidence is not addressing something, it’s just an unjustified opinion
_" ... that's literally what Simon said...Simon said polices work"_ - yes there is no dispute over what Simon said. But as I have repeated a few times now, the IPCC states that its currently not enough, and not enough people are adopting it. Perhaps you should read the report and you would understand this. I dont know why you keep bringing this up, its not being disputed by the IPCC or myself.
_"Literally your las paragraph was you trying to be right for the sake of it."_ actually the last paragraph in question was literally a quote from the IPCC. Sorry if the quote offended you.
The level of governmental and systematic change that we really need just isn't happening through voting, petitioning and writing to politicians. I think we need more numbers participating in groups like extinction rebellion. Non-violent civil disobedience has invoked big social chnage in the past, I'm hopeful it can do the same to invoke the change we need to mitigate to worst effects of the climate crisis.
I worked on a major carbon capture project and at a town hall towards the end of the project I asked where the next carbon capture project would be installed and the boss literally laughed and said oh no we’re not trying this again. The media presentation of carbon capture is a huge spin compared to what the major oil and gas companies are actually planning.
While I usually agree with your videos on this topic, this one feels like it misses the mark. I think it's extremely hyperbolic to call the discussion of carbon capture (CC) technologies in the report a "rotten core", and I think you exaggerate the significance it was given in the report.
On the one hand you agree that carbon capture had a part to play in mitigating climate change, but then present a straw man of the report, saying it suggests we can "carbon-capture our way out of being fossil fuel dependent" (3:20). The quote you highlighted at 3:04 suggests that it may be possible to use CC to allow us to extend the tail of fossil fuel use, but I think the report is crystal clear in saying this is highly dependent on how CC technology develops, and this suggestion doesn't form the "core" of their policy recommendations.
Do you actually disagree with the quoted statement, or think it is inaccurate? It seems to me that if CC could buy us more time, so to speak, it's unambiguously a good thing to invest some time thinking about. It's all very well saying "oh shut up about carbon capture, we just need to cut off emissions!" (paraphrasing), but the IPCC's job is to evaluate and accurately present all possible options to policymakers, and there is a consideration about the feasibility of different methods. Of course, in an ideal world, world leaders might just snap their fingers and cut CO2 emissions by 90%, but in reality its much more complicated than that, and I don't think it's fair to act as though all economical considerations should be reduced down to "fossil fuel lobbies!"
Your clarifying paragraph in the video description somewhat moderates what I think was a too hyperbolic presentation in the video, but I also take issue with your point "What I'm focusing on in this video is what I fear will be the talking point techbros and fossil fuel lobbyists will seize on". Techbros and lobbyists will make their arguments regardless of the contents of the IPCC report, so it's not clear to me what you want the IPCC to do here. Should they not have accurately analysed the potential roles of CC? I think the absence of a section on CC in the report, or worse, a misleading or dismissive section, would have be so much more damaging than the discussion they actually included, as techbros and lobbyists would instead seize on the fact that the IPCC "has a clear anti-industry agenda and doesn't even consider alternatives to cutting industry!"
If you wanted to make a video about the limited role that carbon capture should have in the near-term, pointing out all the relevant facts and figures, maybe even debunking some actual techbro/lobbyist arguments, I think that video would have been much more useful than this one, maligning the IPCC for doing their job and making an assessment of all potential mitigation strategies.
Well said. After reading the report itself, it would appear Simon addressed the report in bad faith.
i think his gripe is more with the moral hazard this creates. the IPCC reports are as influential as it gets, so including a small section that says carbon capture could give us time to keep burning fossil fuels might become an unintended take-home message for policymakers who are looking to take the path of least resistance. sure, the authors’ job is to objectively report the situation, but it is reckless and arguably unethical that they did not immediately walk that statement back by discussing its uncertainties, or the fact that it is entirely contingent on successful mitigation of warming, which, seeing as we cannot know ahead of time whether we will succeed, renders the statement completely useless for guiding policy.
Framing the problem in terms of stranded assets as if its an economic optimization exercise completely fails to capture (1) the depth of the danger were we to continue business-as-usual on the assumption that we can roll out gigatonne scale carbon capture and (2) the breadth of the problem, which goes far beyond how much carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere- we are messing with a system we don’t fully understand, and it is arrogant to think we are in a place where we can push the envelope given some future innovation. To me, it is only a little less ridiculous than saying “well we might find / engineer oil that doesn’t emit greenhouse gas when combusted, so we don’t need to incur the cost of revamping infrastructure!there exists an idealized situation where we COULD wait, so let’s give economists a chance to air arguments almost every scientist agrees are hazardous and absurd!”
TL;DR
though carbon capture is a hot topic and needed to be addressed, the IPCC’s poor communication on this front is opening the door to harmful interpretations which can lead to moral hazards in policy and industry
@@squonkusmcfreengle1584
If a policymaker reads the phrase "CCS could allow fossil fuels to be used for longer, reducing stranded assets", and thinks that is the takeaway from the 63-page summary for policymakers, they're not doing their job properly, to say the least. If a person is willing extract those 13 words from a 63-page summary to suit their agenda, no amount of caveats or cautioning will make a difference.
The original quote actually begins with "Depending on its availability", and other sections (e.g. C.3, C.3.6, C.4.6) describe the challenges or limitations of CC technologies. I just don't believe anyone could honestly come away from reading the policymakers summary with the impression that all we need to do is invest in CC and we're good. Nowhere does the summary suggest that we can "push the envelope given some future innovation". Rather than advocating we wait fro future technological solutions, the report is completely unambiguous in emphasising that we need to severely reduce emissions almost immediately.
I think you're attacking a completely exaggerated strawman of the IPCC report. The fact that it's technically possible for the most bad-faith or stupid people in the world to misrepresent the report does not mean that the IPCC are poor communicators.
@@RationalMind But who would people trust? IPCC or politicians? They both are villified by people who stand to have gains on this on the short term.
@@squonkusmcfreengle1584 This is a good steelman, but I still think that ultimately it misinterprets the role of science, and of bodies like the IPCC, in society.
The role of science should be to discover and inform. It is not up to the IPCC to decide on climate policy, they are there largely to make sure that those who do have that authority are well-informed about the consequences of their decisions. The IPCC should likewise inform the public of the same things, in order for us all to make informed choices both in their daily lives and in the privacy of the voting booth.
In addition to some of the other responses, I sympathize with the point of this video, but I think CCS represents something very important for climate change activists: Hope.
The fact is that we're not going to hit our 2030 targets without carbon capture. We cannot physically build enough EVs, zero-carbon energy storage, solar panels, and wind turbines; re-tool our factories with zero carbon energy, re-fit our residential, commercial, and office buildings with zero-carbon heating and cooling; get rid of or decarbonize the production of plastics; and transition to a low-carbon agricultural system in time to keep within our 1.5 degree budget. Even if we started now with a WWII's worth of investment, we would not ramp up our production capacity for all these necessary items in time.
DAC keeps the promise of a better world alive and is, for me, an important part of avoiding climate despair. Even though I *know* that DAC is an unproven and probably unviable technology long-term.
As such, I think keeping CCS on the table as an option is a wash in terms of whether that's good or bad for the climate. On the one hand, it *might* be used to keep fossil fuels in use longer (I mean, FFs are already being kept alive regardless of the absence of CCS, so I don't entirely agree with you there). On the other, it keeps hope of 1.5 alive.
Rapidly reducing carbon emissions is not enough. Carbon capture is required alongside our transition away from fossil fuels.
organic carbon sequestration yeah, through regen ag, renaturalisation of wetlands, etc. but CCS, even when installed straight at the source of CO2 emissions, is at best a transitional measure and at worst (and, unfortunately, also in practice) just a band aid on a bullet wound to the heart used by fossil fuel execs and govs to justify the usage of high-carbon energy sources.
Great video, I think you are forgetting that a lot of emissions are undercounted, and that the oceans already showing a 1.6c average heating + feedback loops not being counted in the models... Would love to have a video about this!
Yeah, the oceans absorb a lot of heat. If they reach a limit, we in even BIGGER trouble.
I'm currently working on a technology that converts CO2 into dreams and storing it in pipes. Thanks for spreading the word about our company!
not sure how much carbon capture is emphasised in the report, and I agree that we should aim to address climate change under the assumption that carbon capture will not work. but if there's any chance we might need it in the future, it needs to be part of the diverse portfolio to climate change management policy for the technology to improve and costs to go down. Carbon capture falls into the same category as fusion energy; potentially revolutionary technology, but presently, only speculative.
No no you're thinking of something else. Carbon capture is about capturing carbon as it's being emitted from the fuel plant. Capturing CO2 from the atmosphere at 400 ppm concentration is energetically extremely expensive and not worth it.
@@appa609 400ppm is global average. you could do it in areas that have much higher concentrations.
Would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the UK's recent energy plan.
I'm not clever enough to get a Phd, but it's empirically pretty clear that there's no effective method of carbon capture that can deal with the scale of the problem.
1) There are trillions of tons of carbon that need to be captured
2) Ideas for carbon capture are small scale in relation to the size of the problem
3) Many carbon capture techniques require a lot of energy input in order to work them
4) What do we do with the 'captured' carbon? I question whether there are enough abandoned mines or oil wells to be able to hold all this CO2.
5) If we are going to make a compound which 'locks up' a lot of carbon, e.g. CaCo3 (Chalk), do we have enough of the other chemicals required for this?
Simon:
👉🏻The aspect of 'carbon capture' that I find most alarming is this: When fuel (in this case, we mean carbon-based fuels) is oxidized, atmospheric oxygen is bonded with the fuel. Unless the carbon cycle is permitted to continue, that atmospheric oxygen remains sequestered in the combustion byproducts.
✨When these people say 'carbon capture', they are talking about capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide - which is, in reality, OXYGEN sequestration.
🥶Decreasing atmospheric pressure through the sequestration of Oxygen would certainly reduce temperatures .. at the cost that can be counted not just in dollars, but extinctions.
THE THREE BOSSES of Climate-Awareness:
Hbomberguy and Simon Clark and UpIsNotJump.
Only 0.04% of Atmosphere is CO2
We only have to remove 0.02% to go back to pre industrial level. Thats not going to cause dramatic change in pressure.
@Green Country Agroforestry I saw your stream on "The climate Crisis That No One Is Talking About" - It is refreshing to see someone taking all of the available data and forming theory that fits the data, rather than forming a theory, then selectively picking data sets that support the theory. Real science - you're in rare company.
This video is so depressing... Very important too, glad you made it, thank you. It's just so infuriating and devastating to see that, despite the fact that so many people around the world want to actually solve this problem, you only need a handful of people in power to prevent all progress. And the callous apathetic way they just destroy and ruin vast swathes of natural environments with no for or afterthought - I can't even comprehend why they still bother doing anything when clearly nothing matters to them. Why spend all that time making all that money when, clearly, nothing has value to them? It's actually deranged.
And what maybe depresses me more is that there are swathes of ordinary people that think either the big corporations can be convinced to go green or they'll say there's nothing that can be done - as if those corporations are a law of nature that can't be disbanded. I can easily imagine a Hank Green responding to this report with some stupid remark like "Yes, the report is bad, but the good news is, at least we KNOW things are bad :) so this will automatically pressure those companies to go green!" instead of saying the much more obvious "These corporations caused it, they must go."
In our world, there shouldn't be a Shell, or a BP, or an Exxon, or Russian oligarchs, or etc. etc. And there's no excuse for insisting we shouldn't end these institutions. The planet is dying and we're running out of time. The companies must be disbanded, the CEO's and leaders must be tried by the law, the money of those companies has to be democratically invested into the switch from fossil fuel to sustainable eco-friendly energy. This is clearly the solution.
People keep clinging on to the way things are because they can more easily imagine the end of the word than the end of capitalism (or fossil fuel dependency). And I don't understand why. Maybe the pure notion of maintaining the status quo is more important than life itself? Or are they just so scared and cowardly that they see the big scary oil companies and just roll over immediately? It's very depressing.
I'm not sure if Hank green would have that lack of nuance?
That and the fact that it takes carbon emissions to manufacture solar/wind power etc (Planet of the Humans).
To be clear, they can't undo all the progress. Renewables have pushed forth and are viable solution today in spite of those companies and Michael Moore types, they have failed before, we can make them fail again.
You are wishing for an economic catastrophe where millions will die of starvation. Sorry, but this is bad thinking.
@@jinnantonix4570 What about the alternative? We are already in an economic catastrophe. The wealth disparities between the ultra rich and the poor have already caused mass starvation, not only in 3rd world countries, but in developed countries such as the U.S. We have food drives, charity and other person-to-person donations, yet there are families and children who are already out on the streets. Millions are already dying, and they will continue to do so if we let big corporations keep doing what the are doing. The main point of op's comment was that big fossil fuel burning companies need to be disbanded, and much of the profits need to be invested into renewable energy. Not completely cutting the world off of energy, but shifting the source of that energy.
We keep pushing the narrative that "things will get better" yet we continue to stay in the same cycle. We keep companies active, we continue down this climate crisis and millions will die regardless. If we disband companies and shift our energy source, we still have a fighting chance. As climate changes, resources diminishes, and much of the materials used to produce these products that big companies are mass producing will eventually run out. Either way we will head towards an economic disaster, we might as well save the planet on our way there.
I have found this video hugely helpful to consider the mitigation and action to take going ahead, thank you!
Perhaps a suggestion to consider is Nature’s natural asset that is already at play in carbon capture, the forests. Current news in Tasmania,
Australia has noted it is carbon negative due to strong deforestation policy over the past decade. This is a huge consideration in understanding policy I’m making in the upcoming election.
where on Earth did you read that Australia is Carbon negative and that we have strong deforestation policies?! the worst land clearing in Queensland was happening in the 90s and 2000s and some of that was in anticipation of it being outlawed, which saw a spike in the few years before it becoming illegal. That wasn't strong policy, it was the cessation of insane policy. State Government forests in every state of Australia are still being logged for pulp and wood chips, mostly exported to Asia for paper production. Old forests sequester far more CO₂ than regrowth forests and their habitat values are vastly superior to the 2 or 3 species that are encouraged to grow back following clear felling and incineration of the ground vegetation and forestry waste. But this conversion of our old growth and high conservation forests into short cycle plantations of 1 - 3 species of Eucalypts to be logged before they even hit maturity is emissions intense and also impacts ground water, habitat (obviously), water runoff and catchment decline etc etc
emissions in Australia are still rising even without exempting the decrease in deforestation and woodland destruction for livestock production in QLD and NT, and if you consider methane emissions and how undercounted for they are, rising faster than most people realise.
It's disappointing to see that included, we can use wind to generate the energy to replace natural gas with hydrogen gas, now how do we deal with plastics - made from oil. We definitely want carbon capture to start reducing stack emissions and maybe we can withdraw some CO2 we already emitted. We need to understand most people want pragmatic solutions, that don't sound too extreme and won't affect them too much. A lot want to do more, to get involved, national governments need to help us reduce heat loss in buildings, generate local power if we can, recycle properly. I've been recycling for about 30 years and have no idea if all the paper, bottles and plastic really did get recycled - so let's see actual evidence of it, in the UK. Great videos, thanks.
Regardless of the impact, carbon capture is absolutely necessary. The conversation should not be about whether or not to invest in it but how to balance the investments. Even if we drop to zero emissions globally there is still all of the carbon in the atmosphere that has already been emitted. To have true climate security as a species we would need control over the atmosphere's Carbon PPM and carbon capture is one tool to achieve that.
Something that could help would be expanding marsh lands. Also grooves. The reason for that is that in part it would help fish increase their birth rates and also help keep green house gasses.
I know it's most likely not what you are referring to but I want to put the point out there the following point.
I could help to improve the view that people have towards marsh and grooves... If anyone has any idea of some ways to help dilute marsh smell when it comes the point to the intersection between human inhabited areas and the marshes, it would be glorious, but I'm aware that such miracle gardening most likely doesn't exist.
I must however state this. If anyone finds a way to make marsh smells be diluted when air coming from marsh lands enters the cities it would really help with that cause.
@@pgum123gonowplayread4 as sea levels rise and water pushes inland, marshes and mangroves will be great in this regard and at limiting damage from tidal surges.
would love to see a video from you on the UK's current policies/situation and what is being promised to be done (by a lier) compared to what we really should be doing
I'd be interested in you doing a response to Kurzgesagt's newest video on climate. It seemed... way too happy about the idea of 3*C warming in *only a century*, imo. Especially since as far as I'm aware these models don't usually take feedback loops into account.
And that that's somehow *not* a disastrous degree of warming (when we really don't know how human society will react to warming, migration, and disasters, when it already showed itself very inflexible and poorly equipped to deal with something minor in comparison--COVID, and has thus far poorly dealt with the effects of climate change, including migration which most global north countries have reacted to with xenophobia).
Less disastrous than 8 or 10 *C (by the end of the century, I'll add again) doesn't mean it's not still... really bad. Just going from 1.5 to 2*C you double the number of deadly heat waves. Doomerism isn't the way forward, but not giving people the real facts on how much of a difference these degrees make seemed like it could just as easily lull people into thinking everything would work out fine.
There’s a good article from someone who was at COP26 titled ‘The Shitshow in Glasgow’ in The Baffler…
‘… the phrase I heard most in connection with the … COP26 wasn’t “just transition” or “sustainability” or “resilience.” It wasn’t “carbon capture and storage” or “green hydrogen” or “renewable energy.” It was “shitshow.”’
If we were to stop all CO2 production today, the sulfur dioxide that has been hiding 1 degree of rise would dissipate. Our choices are:
1. Continue producing only sulfur dioxide for the several hundred years required for nature to reduce CO2 levels
2. CO2 capture by machine or by plants (trees, algae, etc.), accepting the increased temperature until CO2 levels fall.
3. Increase surface reflection (white paint, or mirrors)
4. Some other method of reducing heat.
Wow! A thoughtful, intelligent video clip on climate change. I didn't even think this was possible. Thank you. Well done.
Simon I would love a video on carbon capture technologies since there are some promising options out there. Look into the Terraform Industries Whitepaper and Prometheus Fuels. These companies acknowledge that cc is not possible today but focus on utilising rapidly declining costs of solar energy. Reading their whitepapers at least changed my mind on carbon capture being a reality before 2030.
I think that the figure that is (partially) shown at 3:34 is key. To find this figure, search for "IPCC AR6 WGIII Figure SPM.7".
I view DAC as more of a method of weaning our fossil fuel addicted world into limited use of fossil fuels. The notion that we can go on business as usual with DAC is ludacris, it is a very energy intensive technology. However, that being said investments in DAC are needed imo
Great information and great video. Important viewpoint on the climate change and the high price for carbon capture tech and the petrol industry lobbying issue.
THE THREE BOSSES of Climate-Awareness:
Hbomberguy and Simon Clark and UpIsNotJump.
I don't know, man. The title of this video is a bit clickbait. You pull one sentence from a massive report and call it the "core". There are many other sentences and graphs in the report showing carbon capture isn't one of the main strategies to focus on in our efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change. The summary report is aimed at policy makers world-wide. That sentence is probably attempting to speak to policy makers of established and emerging petrostates who will now have to pivot wildly in their governments' trajectories if we even hope to mitigate this problem.
Another commenter mentioned "Republicans are gonna love that one section..." Those sorts of politicians will also love titles of videos like this one. They can use this video's thumbnail as ammunition for their rhetoric. Remember, few people actually read the reports (or summaries) and on a global scale, few people will watch this video.
Too little too late.
yeah idk, I think this is underestimating how harmful a statement like this can be in a fucking IPCC report. to lobbyists and the politicians beholden to them, the whole report might as well revolve around this sentence, because it represents for them an admission from the science community that we don’t HAVE to abandon fossil fuels just yet…
the idea of continuing to burn fossil fuels bc CC tech will fix it is so thoroughly stupid that I am genuinely shocked they included anything to this effect
@@squonkusmcfreengle1584 It's a sentence that understands that the whole world is not just the USA and Europe. If you read the summary report, you'll see that it is directed at the world's policy makers. Sixteen percent of people in the world live without access to electricity. That's four times the population of the US. One in three globally doesn't have access to clean drinking water. If we approach governments of the places where many of these people live and give them a climate change mitigation strategy of all or nothing when it comes to fossil fuels, guess what they'll pick?
All the other mentions of carbon capture in the report put this sentence into context. Videos like this one help undermine the report. It seems to have even undermined your opinion of it. This report is the best thing we've got to show the world's policy makers the weighted options to mitigate climate change.
@@thecommentator9181 In a report with "Mitigation of Climate Change" in the title, there's an obligation to explore the data on carbon capture to weigh it as an option. They can't just say, "carbon capture is a dumb pipe dream and we're not gonna even talk about it". They had to talk about it and show their work. The rest of the report goes on to show carbon capture as a poor tactic in terms of mitigation. It gives the problematic sentence context showing that carbon capture would be great if it actually worked, but it doesn't work well yet and is super expensive. Simon Clark took a sentence out of context and made a clickbait video. It worked on us, I guess.
Is it possible to propose a hybrid of both stopping the release of CO2 via burning fossil fuels and then implementing afforestation in stead of deforestation (being a native species of course), to “suck up the CO2” during photosynthesis?
Something you said that stuck out as a necessary carbon expulsion was Concrete, which evidence suggests can be easily substituted out, alongside other construction techniques like Tarmacking. I’m curious as to why this is regarded as such, when such technologies have been used for over 15 years now in New Zealand, Japan, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Chile & Bolivia.
I can understand doing carbon capture WITH a heavy focus on reducing emissions. Carbon holds in the atmosphere for a long, long time. If we could reduce our emissions considerably AND pull the carbon that's already in the atmosphere out of it, then that would be fantastic. But the way Simon describes the situation, it's like recycling plastic without stopping or reducing plastic production. You need to cut it off at the source first if you want it to make an actual impact.
The truble is that at our current level of technology, every $ we spend on carbon capture would remove a tiny fraction of the amount of carbon that spending that same $ on energy efficiency or renewables would prevent the release of in the first place. Simon literally said that towards the end of the century, once all easy emissions reductions have been made, we should start investing in carbon capture to offset those emissions that are more difficult or expensive. But right now its like paying someone to run around your chicken farm catching some of the escaped chickens, instead of paying someone to fix the wholes in your fences.
We passed 2°C over 1750 levels years ago. Once the North Pole melts in a few years, we will quickly go to 3°C, and that’s it for humans. Sorry.
Ah yes the melting north pole in just a few years where have I heard those claims before? Was it in the 90s where they also claimed European forrests would be gone by the 2000? Or was it in the 2000s when they claimed the arctic would be completely ice free by 2010?
None of those predictions came true why should this one?
'The plummeting cost of electricity.' On which planet is that happening because it certainly isn't this one? Does anyone reading this have an electricity bill?
"carbon capture is a pipe dream" - the same was said about solar 20 years ago.
Exactly-IDK what is with some climate activists aversion to nuclear and carbon capture. Being dogmatic about methods to solving climate change makes some climate activists in many ways just as problematic as climate change minimizers. Better than deniers but at least minimizers tend to be more open to solutions.
I'm vegan, drive a 38 mpg small car, and don't air travel, but still have a huge C02 footprint as my home is powered by fossil fuels. Until we have non-fossil base power to feed into transporting goods, powering farm equipment and personal vehicles, homes, cities, industries, etc. our induvial practices are almost negligible. We also need some ways to embarrass the shit of higher income countries for lions share of consuming and polluting, past and present and foreseeable future. Why is it even legal own and power multiple big homes, have private jets, and yachts? Crazy
I love your channel, I feel the fight on climate is only won outside by protest and organising at this point, but how accessible you've made academicly backed, well rounded and, relative to the topic, making it incredibly easy to follow along is a huge stride in informing people and answering questions plenty of people have
Climate policy works lmao. China is increasing emissions, emissions are increasing.
"Atmospheric levels of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, increased by a record amount for the second year in a row in 2021, according to US government data."
The Guardian 9thApril 22.
Nice to see Vaclav Smil on the shelf behind you... probably why I liked your video :-)
Sustainable tree farming, coupled with an increased use of treated lumber would go a long way towards sequestering a fair bit of carbon.
It was Trees that sequestered the lions share of the carbon we dug up to begin with.
Sounds fine at first until you realize the time scale trees need - and that trees cannot be allowed to rot or get burned, or it would have no effect. Basically, because of the tipping points we have very few years to turn this around globally.
So: tree farming might help in the long run, but should be of low priority right now.
I agree with Rotango that tree farming is not a very high priority near-term solution, but I wonder if related nature-based solutions might be somewhat better. I wonder if restoration and expansion of mangrove areas, coupled with other interventions in coastal zones and peatlands, might provide a substantial carbon sink, both long-term and nearer term. As sea-levels rise, a lot of the mangroves will be drowned, but perhaps a lot of the submerged biomass will not be immediately decomposed into carbon dioxide, but accumulate in the continental shelf. If coastal communities can be incentivized to keep on extending their mangrove zones even as older plants sink, it might provide a useful adaptation strategy. Mangroves will help reduce storm surges, and provide other ecosystem services. If anybody is familiar with the research literature on mangroves, I would like to hear more about their potential as a carbon sink. I can imagine building bamboo frames and planting mangrove saplings on them, extending the area that can support mangroves, I wonder if anything like this has been tried.
@@fbkintanar I would be very intererested in what you have to say about this, as seemingly nobody mentions it when talking about the sequestration using biological means. What is with large scale kelp farming? There are types of kelp that grow 60cm a day ( I mean real growth not what appears like growth of e.g. bamboo, that just inflates it's over a long time pre-grown cells with loads of water). According to what I have read this is very scalable, would sequester lot's of carbon and alkalize the oceans again, or wouldn't it ? It could serve as a protein source for an evergrowing population, and overproduced kelp could be sunk to the ground to sequester it's carbon for good?
Regenerative Agriculture is predicated on carbon storage, under the ground, as sugars, to feed the root-supporting bacteria, fungi, arthropods and worms that populate healthy soil. Nature has been doing this for millennia and only recently has the process been 'fully' understood. Thx to Voisin, Savory, Jehne, Jones, Ingham, etc.
But you have to take into account the CO2-emmissions which were prevented by using lumber. For example, if you build an single-family-house out of wood (standard in the US, I know, but in Germany, for example, only recently getting somewhat usual again) instead out of concrete or bricks, you saved a lot CO2-emissions for the concrete/bricks and you store the CO2 from the wood maybe for centuries, depending on the build quality of the house and wether or not redevelopment will be necessary in future, while creating an useful product. That kind of "carbon capturing" is brilliant, if the wood is from sustainable forests. Which is standard in Germany for a few centuries; when you use German lumber you won't have problems with deforestation. Of course this is not the only solution, and probably it is not feasible to build every house out of wood, as even forest-rich Germany can't provide enough suitable wood in an sustainable way, but an small and feasible part of the solution. An low-hanging fruit, so to say.
And if the house needs to be torn down, you can reuse the lumber in chipboards, so it is still "captured" or burn it in an power plant - maybe even former coal-power plants - to create energy - ideally both heating energy and electricity.
I always thought that carbon capture was cheating, and that it wasn't the way to go. Thanks for confirming this. 👍 I am currently on the CISL course, which is where I found out about it. I will be using this report in my course work. Thanks.
If "cheating" helps solve our climate problems-then cheat away. This is not a moral problem-its a survival problem.
it would be fine if it work and was commercially viable, but laws of physics and chemistry prevent it from ever being a viable option for mitigation.
@@bashful228 Physics and chemistry don't prevent it from being viable. There are multiple means of carbon capture that exist right now (i.e. trees, bacteria, machines, etc.) the main problem right now is cost, logistics, and analyzing the potential downsides to our environment. Those are solvable problems though. Carbon capture imo needs more attention as a solution to mitigate climate change. We do not know how far we can go with the green movement and many of there may be a limit to just how far we can go and how fast. For example, people are ALWASY gonna want meat and some people will never even give lab meat a chance. Given these facts, we are going to need to look at removing some greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere as well as smoothly transitioning to green sources of energy and food.
You should do a video about the craziest and dumbest ideas to stop climate change.
I live in Canada, and we had a partial fertilizer ban, which caused backlash with farmers.. I fully understand Eutrophication, but not a single farmer I have seen talk about this 'ban' has brought it up once.. Policy really is the only way to change things, since educating everyone is seemingly impossible right now. If a farmer won't change things on their own, policy is the only thing that will. And I don't mean small farmers nearly as much as the large corporate ones.
Or simon we force them to stop, revolution
Yes we need an army. No great change happens through convincing
Thanks, Simon.
The videos are so good that these days I like the video first and then start watching it. Hands down my favourite RUclipsr
The honest trailer parody at the beginning is really funny
such a great video, too many people rely their hope in technologic advancements
Probably because political advancements aren't reliable.
Ummm I fail to see how reducing emission deals with the gases we have already emitted to date over the last 200 years, and how it can reel back the 450PPM CO2 we are at now?
Especially since we have also triggered multiple dozens of positive feedback loops already with many dozens more to come online as we continue to heat up. I mean let's be real here, we are already in a runaway hot house scenario and have been for some time now.
Lowering emissions, is STILL emitting. And with the human population ever growing to at least 10billion of us planet killers by 2050 lowering our emissions seems to be a non-starter.
I'd like to point out that in Earth's history at this CO2 level we were 6.c hotter than today, AND it takes around 1200 YEARS for emitted CO2 to find a carbon sink to drop into. So you can come to the conclusion that the Earth IS going to reach this temperature eventually, it's just catching up right now since we added this CO2 super fast.
We do NOT need to reduce emissions. We do not even need to make our emissions ZERO. We need to go massively negative and actively hoover up our past emissions and put them back where we found them deep in the ground. Whilst doing SRM to mitigate the loss of aerosol masking effect.
We ALL know, we won't do any of that though. Guess we will just die.
@@magiccloud3074 Both are worthless. Wind and Solar are devices of hopium. They will NOT save us. Mother nature is dying and we are going with her.
The problem is: There is not redical enough politicians and certainly not redical enough parties to make these neccessary changes. But yea, we should vote those who can start doing extremely important changes.
3° warm in a 100 year scale sounds just like a natural thing to be expected from a global climate scale
It doesnt matter what it sounds like. Look at the data. Its a temperature change 100 times faster than normal
"Vote for the party that actually promises meaningful change" haven't seen one of those yet...
Imagine voting for a party that will bring about meaningful change in USA...because imagining about this is all you'll ever do.
At best we can get out the absolute worst, and then when we actually get people in who will do stuff it will be ruined, either by expectations, one of the outstanding people being repulsive, or by one of them being a status quo person in disguise.
While unionizing is back in progress businesses will now just see another thing to successfully crush.
We can peacefully protest and all that will happen is a fake promise by the next President that will do nothing or do too little an action too late.
We can decentralize and form groups that help out each other but that will be dissolved easily by a slight increase in pressure by whomever’s in charge.
We should keeping trying, but it will be impossible simply because they have a sturdy base and the group to topple those in charge will become as bad as them because to make it to the top you will have to become as ruthless and single-minded and unempathetic and unsympathetic and cruel and callous and money-hungry or power-hungry as possible while gaining a huge ego.
2:37 There is a startup company called BioMason that is developing a cement replacement that uses far less energy. I'm not sure where it is in the development stage.
The day I read article in one of the popular science publications about possibility that IPCC might give even little bit support to Carbon Capture, I put same opinion out there wherever I could (unfortunately, it was just for my sake).
Then I read article that Saudi Arabia influenced WG3 report to much more emphasis on Carbon capture. Gloves are coming off.
stuff like this makes me wish i could like a video twice
In the short term Nuclear is the only option to bridge the power gap, but people are too hardheaded about Nuclear power.
its not the only option, and its kinda not an option because we need change now. New nuclear power stations take years to build. we shouldve started a decade ago for nuclear to be viable. in the future nuclear will be essential to be carbon free but for now we need more wind, solar, tidal and we need to share these resources for people not to fortunate to be able to afford them.
Nuclear isn't short term. Wind and solar, insulating homes, paid for by governments stopping funding fossil fuel companies - these are short term things that would make a big short term difference.
1:21 - Jevons paradox. "Average energy intensity has decreased" ... But "more energy used per person" ... "More total energy".
Carbon capture shouldn't be used to hit the 1.5 target. It should be used to go below that target!
I was already ready to shit on you for being another youtuber bashing cc while disregarding things like cement but yeah you're right, that's weird. I sorta expected more from the ipcc?
edit in case i judged to early because i didn't actually read the report: Are they actually talking about cc *while* burning fossile fuels or *after*? because given a completed green transition, we'll probably have quite a bit of cheap excess electricity we could use for ccs to limit further warming after we stop emitting ghgs. That's entirely realistic, it's just cheaper to avoid the emissions than to fix them later 99% of the time
Welcome to late stage capitalism guys, we need to change to socialism, for the earth and the working class people, not the rich
I think one thing that is often overlooked is that if fossil fuels are totally phased out it will remove millions of jobs and trash the economy of quite a few countries tries (this comes from a Scot, whose family has been working in the oil industry for years), what about the men who are working on the oil rigs and ships, what will they do.
Hi Simon, glad to have landed on your channel from Nebula suggestions 🙏
I do have a slight objection to your view on how individual actions are somewhat meaningless in solving the bigger issue, especially emphasized in your Taylor Swift video. And I presume that my objection is likely by no means original, but isn't a change of individual behavior and views a-if not The-prerequisite for societal and political change? How would you expect societal change without individuals feeling organically concerned about their impact?
My thought on why you can’t buy a plug in hybrid from Toyota here in Australia is because the government will miss out on tax on petrol
What do you mean creating concrete is an unavoidable carbon emission? There are plenty of alternative options in testing from wood to clay to coral bricks or am I missing something?
The thing with carbon capture is that I'm honestly only okay with it if it's being used to reduce the PPM of CO2 back to preindustrial levels to at least try to undo the damage that's been done by industrial society. I don't want carbon capture to just be an excuse to perpetuate the status quo of burning fossil fuels. Even if fossil fuels caused no emissions, there's only so many of it. Eventually we'll run out of carbon-intensive energy sources and be forced to use power sources like renewables and nuclear energy anyways, so it'd honestly be illogical to continue burning fossil fuels except to maintain the profits of corporations like ExxonMobil and BP. The ineffectiveness of current climate policy is a shining example of what happens when one puts greed before rationale.
What exactly is your pre industrial age date? As we know Carbon levels have been much higher in the history of the planet earth
@@marcblank3036 Um, shortly before humans began affecting the climate? I think the answer is pretty clear if you actually think about what I said in good faith. Of course Earth's climate has changed over thousands and even millions of years, the difference is that natural climate change takes hundreds to thousands of years to happen, not a century and a half. The spike in global temperatures is an indisputable fact that's been known for decades. If you're some misinformed dipshit who still thinks climate change is a myth, I don't want to waste my time engaging with you. It's like engaging with something who thinks that grass is purple unironically, a waste of time and mental energy.
This analysis ignored the agency of nature-based solutions. We have carbon capture technology called trees. We used to have six trillion of them, but now only three trillion. Plants, soil, biodiversity and climate interact in complex earth systems that the IPCC ignores sheeting the problem back to carbon with a very Western reductionist carbon accounting approach.
Yup ,The average American/European produces 16 tons on carbon each year. The world largest carbon scrubber plant is good for about 4000tons a year. so for every 250 people you'd need one of those massive plants. And even we could make room for them who's going to pay and operate them? 🤷♂
In defence of carbon capture:
Our plan should be to get to zero emmissions as fast as possible right? Okay, there are very real and serious prblems we face with getting to a 100% carbon free society. Getting to 85% and 90% will be very much easier than getting the last 10% because of several reasons including the weather dependence of renewables, and certain industrial processes which rely on carbon (like steel and concrete.) These real life difficulties (there are more but you get the point) exist independently of whether it is good or bad for fossil fuel coorperations. Simply referencing lobbying as to the reason that CC is discussed is a bit silly - there are actual problems with reducing to zero as fast as we want to and need to. Therefore, while carbon capture is currently very expensive, a point you correctly made, in 40 years time, it may be cheaper to capture the last 10% of emmisions rather than reduce completely to 100% carbon free. From a "how much carbon do we have in the atmosphere" pospective, there is no problem with this approach. Emmiting 10 tons and capturing 10 tons is the same as emitting zero tons from this point of view. In fact it might be better to capture since we have developed the tech and so can then use it to capture more than we emmit and start reducing the greenhouse effect, not just slow it down. (Even though over longer time scales we will need to find an alternative, since fossil fuels are finite)
Reasons why it might be cheaper in the future:
1. When we have a large portion of renewables in our electricity mix we will have times of over production (producing more than we comsume.) During these times electricity will be very cheap and we can use it in certain eco freindly ways. Yes we will store some, trade some, use some for hydrogen and other chemicals and fuels and probably waste some, but why not use some for capturing carbon?
2. As time goes on tech gets cheaper.
3. If carbon prices continue to rise (like they have in europe), we will get to a point where it will be more expensive to emmit than it will be to capture, making it an economic no-brainer. If they dont go up, we can make them go up by reducing the carbon cap (in a cap and trade system).
I agree that the last 10% of CO2 emission will be the hardest to remove, but before you deal with the last 10% you have to worry about the first 90%, and we're so far away from even that that carbon capture being potentially the final pieces of the puzzle is a moot point.
@@alexpotts6520 okay... but the argument being put forward in this video seems to be that we don't need to bother with carbon capture because we should just be going 100% carbon free right now using other methods (renewable energy tech etc.)
You're argument here is very different (correct me if I'm wrong) that we shouldn't be too concerned with the "last 10%", let's focus on the "next 10%" and then it would be correct to say that carbon capture would not play a role. But the IPCC report being... critisised(?) In this vid is not only concerned with the now, they try to provide solutions for the rest of the century, so it seems wierd to say that they (the IPCC) shouldnt be talking about carbon capture today just because we dont need it right now. (Not that you were saying exactly that...) I just found it to be a weak critisism...
THE THREE BOSSES of Climate-Awareness:
Hbomberguy and Simon Clark and UpIsNotJump.
You basically articulated the central thesis of my dissertation and now I have to cite this video ;)
God I am so scared for the next few decades......Like I'm just scared that by the time I'm 60 or 70, I'd have to fight for my own water and food, I wouldn't be able to go outside because it would be too hot, and my friends and family would suffer and die......I hate thinking about this and I hope we will be ok. :(
Here is something that you might want to consider, we probably won't ever become completely Fossil fuel free and here is why. The insulation on your vehicles regardless of what type, the panels inside the vehicles and many other things in vehicles, your house and its insulation and materials in it your electronics and everything involved with them, people who live in areas that are not directly connected to the grid, mining of raw materials and the creation of power generation systems all require Fossil fuels in huge portions of their manufacturing and maintenance and we simply don't have any way of replacing the role that Fossil fuels play with them at this point in time. I'm also not saying that we will never be able to stop using them I'm saying that we might never be completely free of their use. I also need to say that we live in a world that is energy stupid and I'll try to explain we decommission nuclear fuels well before they are actually spent because there overall output has decreased to a point where they aren't useful in a very specific type of power generation systems but we have the ability to build reliable energy sources from the nuclear leftovers but we don't for whatever reason you may want to say but it is basically stupidity any way that you look at it. Nuclear waste is not useless like many people think. I'll give you a link of reasons why, RTG radio thermal generators, alpha, beta, and, Gama, voltaic generators, thermovoltaic generators, all of them are very viable and very useful for many applications and you also need to consider that most nuclear waste is still very capable of boiling water in a relatively short period of time and they could be extracting energy from that but they just don't care about it. Then you have the wind generators that aren't even the best way to generate energy from because of area taken up and efficiency and durability and direction utilization is not that useful. If we really wanted decent quality and reliability from wind we would be using vertical helical turbines but instead we have a system that takes up a huge amount of space, can't generate a quarter of the power of a helical generator and is known to be usable in only one direction requires huge amounts of maintenance in places that are fundamentally extremely dangerous and fundamentally hard to properly control and maintain. With a helical vertical wind generator you can construct the whole thing in one or two sections and then simply lift it into place and then use wind from any direction and instead of having a generator or gearbox that is hundreds of feet off of the ground and nearly impossible to properly maintain your access to your generator is right at the bottom potentially inside a box under ground or simply in a building it sits on top of or if your particularly ambitious all along the vertical axis of the wind turbine. You also have another beautiful thing to look at and instead of needing three to five acres of clearance between each generator you would need less than a quarter of an acre per vertical helical windmill. You could also make them just as tall as a normal generator or shorter but either way you will need less land to accomplish the same goal as the other type and it will be better in the long run because of any direction wind use and everything else I stated. If you were particularly ambitious you could also add minor solar generation onto your vertical helical turbine. I can easily keep listing things that are obviously misuses of our existing energy systems but I think I have gotten my point across.
As the discussion moves more towards solutions and their implementation, scientist need to make room for the engineers to run the discussion. Science and engineering are 2 quite separate things. It's already annoying to often see scientists (not to mention activists) thinking that having a technology means that the problem is just a few years away to be solved.
As B. Gates said: "The idea that we have the current tools and just because these utility people are evil people and if we would just beat on them, that's more of a block then climate denial."
Rather worringly, I only just looked up the aim of the IPCC SPM. The aim of the SPM in WGIII isn't about stopping, but just "limiting" human induced climate change. That, is quite terrifying
Haven't found anything on the topic that isn't terrifying. For example, the temperature bar chart in this video....
We need to operate under the assumption that we won’t have large-scale carbon capture if we want this to be bad and not catastrophic.
I wonder how much Exxon paid for that sentence.
This is very very good Simon, thanks. Are you with Extinction Rebellion Scientists?
Carbon Capture: let's use massive amounts of energy to mitigate the negative consequences of how much energy we use.
Exxon's fact suppression = a burglar caught in your neighbor's house with a text from you on his phone saying: "the neighbors just left."
The Cement and Steel industries (like Plastics) have brought great benefits to the modern world but, according to reports, each contributes 8% of global CO2 emissions (together 16 times that of the UK). Each wind turbine requires 26 tons of steel (for offshore - more for the anchor pylons, and onshore 22 cubic metres of concrete for the base). Are we making omelettes without cracking eggs?
I really disagree with the dismissal of carbon capture. Yes mitigation is necessary through green energy but we also very very likely will need to utilize carbon capture technology (along with measures of carbon capture like tree planting) to help repair the damage to the climate.
Seems like a CCS video would be great Simon!
Has anyone considered how extreme policy changes would have to be in certain countries? How extreme would the effects of those policies be on the population?
Voting doesn't always work, and it fails spectacularly when it fails. GW Bush lost the popular vote to Gore, and Trump lost the popular vote to Clinton. Also the pendulous nature of our politics means that it's basically impossible to get anything done without risking a reversal from the following president/party.
I did the math. The United States would have to spend about 11.5% of its total GDP the first year to obtain net zero carbon capture. As technology improved the cost would decrease but since the economy would collapse the first year this wouldn't matter because we wouldn't have a GDP.
I mean, if it saves the world, 11% of GDP is definitely a price worth paying. And as you say, costs will come down fast.
Hi Simon! I noticed that in this video your frustration is clearly visible. I agree with you. Policies need to be put in place and companies have to be considered accountable. I believe that a good combination of greener lifestyle, right regulations and cooperation among different domains is the key. Oh, and of course no pipe dreams!
THE 3 BOSSES of Climate-Awareness:
Hbomberguy and Simon Clark and UpIsNotJump.
If you look at fracking and shale gas in the USA - using lower emission carbon (natural gas) to replace coal, oil, etc has actually dropped American emissions. Now imagine we use cleaner natural gas in poor developing countries to replace dirty coal, wood and dung burning. That would reduce emissions temporarily while, allow the poor to develop and live healthier lives and give us time to replace carbon with non-carbon solutions. Maybe have a look at it. The data supports this as a solution.
I don't think their is really an appetite for a feasible solution.