If you enjoyed the video, please do give it a like and share it with people who you think will also enjoy it! This is a story I think everyone should hear. If you would like to support my work then you can do so by: - Signing up with Brilliant: www.brilliant.org/simonclark - Buy my book on the history of atmospheric science, Firmament: geni.us/firmament - Sign up for my monthly newsletter: eepurl.com/ihPiX5
You should do an interview with Steve Keen to do a deep dive on how badly mainstream economists have trivialized the economic consequences. it's mind boggling.
Hey Simon, love your stuff! I've seen a video on DonutMedia about some eFuel/synthetic gasoline that Porsche is making in Chile which is "eco friendly": they captures CO2 from the atmosphere and water and run the whole thing on green energy (why they are in Chile), but running an engine still ends up releasing CO2, so it ends up being "neutral". Would love your analysis on efficiency of the whole process, since there is the whole tradeoff of green energy vs distance to customers and such.
Good report. One minor correction: John Sununu's name should be pronounced with the stress on the second syllable. Older US news broadcasts consistently pronounce it that way, such as the introduction in this interview: ruclips.net/video/YnC0seSAYSg/видео.html
I've always thought that the fixing of the ozone hole problem was one of the few (if not only) moments in history where governments came together to fix a problem for the better of society in stead of purely helping the people in charge. Hearing that it basically only happened because du pont saw an opportunity for profit makes a lot more sense and makes me very sad....
The stratospheric ozone is in the worst condition ever. Don't be fooled. Every rocket launch shreds more ozone, and nuclear testing was much more devastating to the ozone layer than hairspray or refrigerant. UV-C is now hitting Earth's surface. Best to you!
It gets worse. If oil company executives weren’t stuck in the past they would’ve seen the potential profitability of using their existing offshore and drilling technology to provide the world with abundant sustainable energy from offshore wind and geothermal. So for climate change to exist at all The people in power from the 1970s onwards would’ve had to have been stupid as well as evil.
The fact that I could've grown up in a world that was already fighting climate change instead of a world where we're barely starting is crazy Edit: I don't want people to read this message and get all hopeless, idk exactly how to word it, but just because we're starting now, doesn't mean we shouldn't start. There is still time to make a change and we should keep fighting to make a change. It sucks that the stupid fuel industry has really given us a setback, but that's only more of a reason to fight back. We can't let those assholes win.
Great advances have been made. 1950's and 1960's were the two worst decades for smog. The clean air act of 1970 was passed unanimously by both parties. And gradually America's air quality has Improved. No way I would go back to that era.
I'm sorry but I'm afraid my generation failed you. I'm 63 years old now and a lifelong environmental activist but the vast majority of Americans of my generation have done little to nothing to change their ways... At this point I'm very glad my wife and I decided not to have children so we don't have to explain to them why they're so screwed 😢
If the tobacco industry could be fined hundreds of millions for deliberately hiding the deadliness of tobacco, how much is the price for knowing you are creating a climatic apocalypse and funding "research" to say you're not for fifty years?
It's really sad. Because we don't value the things we already destroyed. For example, a forest being deforested and the deforested land is used as a farm or for other uses. But the amount of trees that were destroyed, won't be reversed by re planting them. What's lost is lost. So, the price they need to pay is impossible because it's gone. So there's no way to tell
The next best thing is to ensure gasoline and other products like gasoline will never be used again as fuel sources, but as those fuel sources are one of the most energy-dense source of fuels they will always be needed for some stuff. We can’t even get a symbolic victory of learning from our lesson and ensuring we can rid ourselves of the objects that were marketed that got us into this place. We might lessen land transportation, use nuclear energy and some other renewable sources when appropriate, learn how to reconstruct forests and seas to be sort of back to the way they were, hunt overpopulating stuff to give others a chance, and maybe even successfully eradicate invasive species and even heavily restrict overseas travel, but all are mitigatory efforts. We will never have a good climate for humans for a very long time nor will we realize the actual extent of damage or what we lost, and we can’t even make efforts to at least wean off permanently gasoline and diesel and natural gas simply because they are too energy-dense. In short? They’ve pretty much won. They got their profits, and given that everything is monopolized now, their companies will always stand.
An inapt analogy, given that the exact opposite religion(anti-smoking tobacco)gave rise to the simple lie that smoking tobacco*causes* cancer, which is demonstrably untrue - certainly in the cases of the writer who smoked billions of cigarettes without any cancer for seventy plus years.
I live in Massachusetts. I remember when Sununu was Governor of New Hampshire and Massachusetts was complaining about the pollution coming down the Merrimack River from the industrial cities of Concord, Manchester and Nashua. Sununu said: “pollution is just a byproduct of progress”. This is what I think of when I hear his name.
And now in numerous cities of China, they drive cars with headlights on during the day because the smog is so thick… And all aquatic life has been poisoned, as well as the people; the price of progress with fossil fuels is tragic
"pollution is just a byproduct of progress" lmao, Sununu could have just been a Soviet party leader in the 1970s/80s with that sentence XD, Soviet Sununu XD.
Ooooh, I'll bet that the Oil Companies that funded the sabotage evidence would be rilly, rilly scared if we abolished an elected government. I prefer that we abolish ignorance in Voters and we imprison proven criminals IN government. There's a reason why people abolished monarchies and chose self-rule and the elected government. Catch up, won't you?
If anything, I think this shows that the real "villain" in this story is Nirenberg. Sununu did what he did out of ignorance. However Nirenberg, like you said, knew what he was doing. If anything, Sununu was merely an ignorant pawn manipulated and set in motion by a man who wanted this to happen for whatever reason.
One of the many sad outcomes is that these people, who deliberately lied to citizens causing enormous damage, will never pay for their crimes. There should be a wall of shame with these people quoted as the criminals they were/are.
I agree, I am one of those people who believes that there should be statues of, and monuments to, horrible people that have damaged this world, but with evident plaques describing exactly who they were and what damage they caused. Every bust of Hitler was removed after the war but I think every major capital should get one situated near their government building as a warning of what happens when you abuse the power of those buildings. People might be less inclined to be malevolent if they were reminded that their infamy would stay in the public eye for a very long time.
In the 50's my dad owned an oil drilling company, making million$. He quit and started taking our family around the US to show us the destructions of man: drilling, clear cutting, soil pollution. He tried in vain to tell people in the petro industry that we had to change our ways or all would be lost. They didn't care, or change. Thanks for trying Dad.
Simon, I teach climate change in universities. I also tell my students about what Reagon, Nirenberg, George C Marshall had done to fool people, but not in a way as compelling as you did. I am sure my students will enjoy watching this RUclips video. Thanks so much for the great efforts. Bravo!
One might presume that teaching involved at least some degree of accuracy in the dissemination of information to malleable young minds? Your comment displays room for improvement in this essential requirement. Namely, Reagan (not Reagon) and Nierenberg (not Nirenberg).
I had the book "Global 2000 - The report for the President", when I was young. The predictions for climate change were pretty accurate. Jimmy Carter was a far better US president (and person) than people gave him credit for. As with so many things: "Then came Reagan, and things turned far worse"
The first thing clown Ronald did was to take down the solar panels from the roof of the White House... Btw, the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex Mina ?
@@lorenzoblum868 Unfortunately, Reagan (and his British mate Thatcher) was one of the most consequential presidents, ever. The heritage of their neoliberal politics still lingers around. Also, the terrible approach "be chaste and don't be gay!" towards the AIDS epidemic killed so many people.
This kinda hurts to watch, seeing how far back we knew it was a problem all laid out in this way is kinda heartbreaking especially when viewed today, when it’s now a very partisan issue. It’s so frustrating that if just a few things had gone slightly differently we could be living in a much better world today
If we done a few things slightly differently in the Victorian era we would’ve stopped burning fossil fuels by 1900. Not because of climate change you understand but because fossil fuels are not economically viable when compared to the alternatives that could’ve been developed in the Victorian era. But they’re also an ethical to. Coal was dug up using slavery and child labour.
First thing Ronald the clown did was talking down the solar panels from the roof of the White House... Btw, the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex anybody?
@@lorenzoblum868 no you dont understand, the military is totally necessary, we definetly need them to overthrow slightly left wing governments in the global south
Conservatives love Reagan. But he nearly tripled the National Debt and started the decline of the middle class. GHW Bush was correct when he called Reagan’s “trickle down” economics Voodoo. There is no trickling down. What we get when we reduce taxes on the very wealthy is a bubbling up.
Hi Simon, I am a meteorologist and really enjoy your videos. You do a phenomenal job at explaining the science of our atmosphere! I must say, I bought your book and would definitely recommend it for those who want to learn about the history of atmospheric science and the basics of how our atmosphere works.
@@lorenzoblum868 by what metric is carbon toxic. When all life is dependent on it .toxicity is measured by the LD 50 test .what exactly has carbon to do with the military apart from the fact that all personell are carbon based life forms .
@@lorenzoblum868 Are you a apid or full-time activist? You keep posting the same thing. How many GT of CO2 did the US military emit last year. How about China Baowu Steel Group?
@@andrewcheadle948 you do realize the ipcc has no power right… it just does research and makes suggestions. They don’t hold political power like billionaires with lobbying power or politicians. Stop being stupid
What an absolutely brilliant piece of art, Simon! It was a hard watch, especially seeing how so few people can have such a huge and long-term impact on our lives.
@@Matty18795 By that you mean misinformation. Why is it always yanks promoting falsehoods and conspiracy theories? Herr Goebbels would be immensely proud of your work!
This is phenomenal! It's such a complicated and serious topic, yet it's presented in a very engaging way. Probably my favorite video among all videos I've watched so far in 2023.
Thank you for compiling things together so we’ll. I still meet people who don’t believe it, and it’s heartbreaking. I’ve gotten to the point “It doesn’t matter what you believe, it will happen, and it will because of people who think just like you.”
yar, that part at the end really got me. While in the US, being able to point at the handful of people from the US that deliberately stonewalled meaningful international policy and thus killing hope of giving our place up to our grandchildren and great grandchildren, the real roadblock as Reagan demonstrated was already baked the Red vs Blue two-party political system. Basically how the Bork Nomination Hearings sparked off a war of destructive, no compromise, war for a small faction within the GOP that culminated with that small faction gaining near total control of the RNC by the Reagan era. There has significant drop in bi-partisanship on Capital Hill since those events largely because of this Zero-Sum 'Us vs Them' mentality that has rooted itself firmly in the GOP/RNC policies. As Simon points out at the end of the video, there was already a strong divide between Red and Blue simply because Blue supported Climate Advocacy, therefore Red automatically took it on themselves to oppose it for no greater reason than to use it as a means to oppose Blue by proxy. Edit: If you read this far, I should mention that the Bork thing was Dem's doing the thing I just described the RNC still do, but at least I dont see the Dems continuing to uphold a grudge that throws the entire earth and all future generations under the bus after 40+ years after the fact.
Government is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex ~ Frank Zappa? Btw, the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex anybody?
That stubbornness is what broke the USSR, and brought the idea of limited government and individual ownership of weapons to the world. It’s a double edged sword, but it’s slain some dragons in its time. Have a care for Chesterton’s Fence.
Hearing an enthusiastic call for a "new cool idea: Carbon Tax" in 1988 gave me an aneurism when it seems nothing has really changed, the conversation 35 years later is still "we need to think about this cool new idea of a Carbon Tax no one has done before". We still don't have a real Carbon Tax anywhere in the world.
@@kastanie7445 carbon tax isn’t achievable without technology facilitating the ‘accurate’ tracking of individual movement & consumption. We are being nudged towards a totalitarian system of mass surveillance under the banner of climate change.
And people still praise this dude becuz guess what ‘my pay and life standards is a tiny bit better therefore the government is amazing and all actions justified”. And jimmy carter is still condemned for just being in leadership during the Iranian siege
Reagan is probably the biggest piece of sh1t politician to ever be elected. People have know clue how bad he screwed this country and world up. May he rot in he11
It has multiple villains, billionaires whilst one of the two biggest ones are Rupert Murdoch and Henry Kissinger. The biggest Henchman being Ronald Reagan.
What jumped out to me was how big a part the two ecoconomists had in this. Perhaps economists should also be required to study more anthropology and history, because their view of the world through economics does strike me as often being narrow.
their "arguments" were being made in bad faith; with the same success you could say that technological progress will fix climate change 200 years in the future and today there's absolutely nothing to worry about. it's poppycock, but many will buy it, which is the point of such arguments. other economists have been pointing out for decades that the world will be poorer if climate change continues unabated.
Economists should never be involved in any of these kinds of decisions, because profits over people is their highest believe and any change to the status quo is more expensive than just doing nothing.
@@07Flash11MRC I don't think that's always true. For example, giving homeless people a house for free is theorized to be more cost effective than jailing and hospitalizing them. I just think our current economic theory mostly worships short term profit, as you mentioned.
@@SpinningSideKick9000 It's not "theorized", it's been proven already which is why smart countries like Finnland do just that. You just proved my point. The only reason for economists to do things (meaning changing the status quo) is when it's economically useful for them, not out of the kindness of their heart or them caring for other people. And even then, when you consider countries like the US they don't even do the right thing when it is economically sound.
@@1donniekak That is historically incorrect. Humnaity has flourished in a period called the Holocene wich was remarkably stable. Humanity is bringing this period to an end. We are currently in the process of the fourth mass extinction
but just think if we had acted back then, and taken the problem seriously as adults with some degree of responsibility and foresight, instead of children raiding the proverbial candy store, we'd have been out the past many decades of excess. our computers would be a little slower and probably a bit more expensive. we might have fewer cars, and have to hold on to them longer. the landfills would be without so many layers of yearly replaced ifones. instead of rampant suburbanism with 3 trucks in every driveway, we'd have focused on living more efficiently, with less waste, which might have forced us to move closer together and make our cities nicer and more livable, with dense public transportation networks instead of five layered cloverleaf junctions and stripmalls from coast to coast. there'd probably also be fewer of us. And we'd live leaner, healthier, longer lives. things would be less rushed. probably jet travel would be very much diminished, along with all wasteful high-emission and nonessential frivolties for which sustainable alternatives exist. maybe we'd take it slow and cross the oceans on ships again. take 3-4 days to go from a port in Europe to NYC for example. And so what?
Superb Simon, I taught EES (Earth & Enviornmental Science) and physics at high school (Pre uni in Australia) until retiring 5 years ago. Worked for Shell London 1981 and then EXXON/Mobil, Esso Australia 1982 to 1986 as a petroleum geologist, finding and producing heaps of oil and gas. EXXON never told us about what they knew, I am glad I didn't know or I would have resigned and done something else. So lucky to have moved across to teaching and spent the following 30 years honing this stuff. I wish we had your amazing renditions then, I would have used them. I have learned so much from you since retiring on this subject. Eg we always did the standard Greenhouse effect with the atrmosphere simply acting like a greenhouse, you showed that it is not like that, it is a result of energy being emiited to space at higher cooler levels in the atmosphere due to the increased CO2 below and by the steffan boltzman law (sorry re spelling here buffs) the energy trapped below is temp to the power 4. ie if it gets emiited at 2C with low CO2 but at 0 C at higher CO2 at a higher altitude then it 2 to the power 4 as much energy is trapped in the lower atmosphere. Or your one about carbon 13 reducing in the atmosphere over recent time due to fossil fuel burning, just a sibliome proof of it is humans making the CO2 that is causiing the climate change. So simple, so neat. Thankyou.
I was at the House of Reps. hearing in 1980, and still remember Al Gore asking questions to Roger Revelle. It made a huge impression on me. One of the last questions Revelle answered was related to forecasts/if we did nothing, where would sea levels be, and Revelle said something about the water would be lapping at the steps of the Capitol. There was, as I remember, a moment of dead silence. And the gavel came down and the hearing was adjourned. People filed out as if nothing had happened. The reason why this was so memorable was the apparent lack of reaction (or disbelief perhaps) on the part of many people there. Thank you for your video.
It's very hard to say in hindsight whether the technology would have been available. Had there been serious investment from back then in research fir solar panels, wind turbines and innovative nuclear technologies, we could have leapfrogged 10-15 years ahead compared to where we are today. Also a contributing factor were the relatively low oil prices in the mid 1980s to mid 2000s, so there was no economic incentive to move away from oil.
uhm, no, i disagree. one example of germany, my native country: during the 2000s we were world leaders in solar panel production actually. then because of some political givings, the industry faltered, companies went to asia and today we buy from china. currently, our current infrastructure minister is lobbying against a ban on combustion engines with other eu countries who rely on their car manufacturing industry. the technology has been in drawers or could have been today where we wanted it to be if people werent assholes and old industries would be willing to change instead of clinging to their power. good for them, bad for us all. other technologies like fusion or gas or hydrogen may be good for particular industries or niches, but in a global context, reneweables are where its at. unfortunately, europe will not decide that, but rather countries like china and india (and the us, south america and russia by extension, but mainly the big global players).
a huge part of the greenhouse gases were released in the last 20-30 years. had they put in the effort, money and research during the 70s and 80s into consciously moving away from fossil fuels we'd be in a far better condition today. even back then there were technologies that were clearly better than burning coal and fossil gas.
Anyone remember the oil fields on fire in Koweït? Btw, the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex anybody? Thank you CIA / Pentagon for Northstream wrecking.
@@Luemm3l You must be smoking crack. Europe is in an energy crisis exactly because there out their faith in unreliable solar and wind. Mass poverty and deindustrialization will happen if the world goes down the path of Europe.
Yeah we definitely had the technologies to begin making policies with teeth back in the 80s. And with proper funding those technologies would have only become more efficient, as well as refining newer technologies. Expanding nuclear to mitigate or even halt coal produced electricity is a no brainer. Wind and solar are still vastly underused (HOAs even limit private citizens from effectively using solar on their own homes). There was much we can have done back then, and far more that we can do now. But we won’t. Not until something true my disastrous happens, which will probably be in about a decade or so, and by then it’ll be a bit late in the game.
This and the previous video on the history of man-made climate change is some of the best summarised educational videos explaining what we know, what we knew, and why we are in the situation we are now. Truly impressed!
Simon makes great videos. But still not a word about the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex... Big Brother (algorithms) is watching you tube...
The entire religion of global warming or climate change-And on any view it is religion because based on belief or passive unquestioning acceptance, is based upon one fundamental misapprehension which, if you remove it, causes the entire theory or religion to collapse, and the fundamental misapprehension is that there either is or can be, any such thing as a Global temperature. It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth. A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate. Planet Earth doesn’t have ‘a temperature’, one figure that says it all. There are oceans, landmasses, ice, the atmosphere, day and night, and seasons. Also, the temperature of Earth never gets to equilibrium: just as it’s starting to warm up on the sunny-side, the sun gets ‘turned off’; and just as it’s starting to cool down on the night-side, the sun gets ‘turned on’. The ‘temperature of Earth’ is therefore as much of a contrived statistic as the GDP of a country. (If the Earth was in equilibrium, that is, if it absorbed and re-emitted the Sun’s radiation perfectly, as a ‘blackbody’, then its rotation would be irrelevant, and the temperature would be a constant 6 ⁰C. Mocking up the effects of Earth’s albedo brings the ‘blackbody’ temperature down to -18 ⁰C, and including greenhouse warming brings it back up to around 15 ⁰C.) ‘The climate’ is difficult to define: is it a trend over one decade, century, or millennium? For what sized region is it defined ? Weather is very variable - how can we go from weather to climate? Furthermore, climate change on human timescales is a very small effect, and the empirical data needed for climate models have large ‘error’ bars. If you cannot define what is changing, you cannot say it is changing; it is essential to understand that no man apprehend or experience the entire plant -the whole-thing all-at-once. You cannot even sense apprehend experience yourself - he-whole-thing, all-at-once, so how could you possibly experience something as relatively gigantic as the planet on which you live, other than piecemeal and seriatim - little bit after little bit. If you remove the fallacy that there either is or can be, any such thing as a “Global Temperature” , the entire edifice of climate change and/or global warming, collapses, because it is contingent on the idea that there can be , or is, a “ Global Temperature, which is a thermodynamic and mathematical impossibility. While it is possible to treat temperature statistically locally, it is meaningless to talk about a global temperature for Earth. The Globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless. Or talking about economics, it does make sense to compare the currency exchange rate of two countries, whereas there is no point in talking about an average 'global exchange rate'. If temperature decreases at one point and it increases at another, the average will remain the same as before, but it will give rise to an entirely different thermodynamics and thus a different climate. If, for example, it is 10 degrees at one point and 40 degrees at another, the average is 25 degrees. But if instead there is 25 degrees both places, the average is still 25 degrees. These two cases would give rise to two entirely different types of climate, because in the former case one would have pressure differences and strong winds, while in the latter there would be no wind.
The entire religion of global warming or climate change is based upon one fundamental misapprehension which, if you remove it, causes the entire theory or religion to collapse, and the fundamental misapprehension is that there either is or can be, any such thing as a Global temperature. It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth. A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate. Planet Earth doesn’t have ‘a temperature’, one figure that says it all. There are oceans, landmasses, ice, the atmosphere, day and night, and seasons. Also, the temperature of Earth never gets to equilibrium: just as it’s starting to warm up on the sunny-side, the sun gets ‘turned off’; and just as it’s starting to cool down on the night-side, the sun gets ‘turned on’. The ‘temperature of Earth’ is therefore as much of a contrived statistic as the GDP of a country. (If the Earth was in equilibrium, that is, if it absorbed and re-emitted the Sun’s radiation perfectly, as a ‘blackbody’, then its rotation would be irrelevant, and the temperature would be a constant 6 ⁰C. Mocking up the effects of Earth’s albedo brings the ‘blackbody’ temperature down to -18 ⁰C, and including greenhouse warming brings it back up to around 15 ⁰C.) ‘The climate’ is difficult to define: is it a trend over one decade, century, or millennium? For what sized region is it defined ? Weather is very variable - how can we go from weather to climate? Furthermore, climate change on human timescales is a very small effect, and the empirical data needed for climate models have large ‘error’ bars. If you cannot define what is changing, you cannot say it is changing; It is essential to understand that no man apprehend or experience the entire plant -the whole-thing all-at-once. You cannot even sense apprehend experience yourself - he-whole-thing, all-at-once, so how could you possibly experience something as gigantic as the planet on which you live, other than piecemeal and seriatim - little bit after little bit. If you remove the fallacy that there either is or can be, any such thing as a “Global Temperature” , the entire edifice of climate change and/or global warming, collapses, because it is contingent on the idea that there can be , or is, a “ Global Temperature, which is a thermodynamic and mathematical impossibility. While it is possible to treat temperature statistically locally, it is meaningless to talk about a global temperature for Earth. The Globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless. Or talking about economics, it does make sense to compare the currency exchange rate of two countries, whereas there is no point in talking about an average 'global exchange rate'. If temperature decreases at one point and it increases at another, the average will remain the same as before, but it will give rise to an entirely different thermodynamics and thus a different climate. If, for example, it is 10 degrees at one point and 40 degrees at another, the average is 25 degrees. But if instead there is 25 degrees both places, the average is still 25 degrees. These two cases would give rise to two entirely different types of climate, because in the former case one would have pressure differences and strong winds, while in the latter there would be no wind.
This is a great summary of the political history that brought us to the mess we're facing, now. I've been watching this develop in the newspapers all my adult life. I would like to see a summary of how this campaign of orchestrated confusion continued beyond 1990 (it is still going on to this day).
I'm tired of the belief in climate change vs non-belief in climate change dichotomy being referred to as a left-wing/right-wing issue, as if they were two equally valid sides of the same coin. Let's just call it what it is, being pro-science vs being anti-science.
I'm not sure with hindsight we can suggest anyone believed capitalism was "the best way to improve people's lives", it was just the best way for corporations to make the most money at the expense of people's wellbeing.
It ought not to come as too much of a surprise that economists of the ‘80s dismissed climate change. After all, their economic models treated the natural world as an externality. Despite the Stern report and subsequent economic analyses concluding otherwise, our leaders continue to worship at the alter of neoliberalism and, contrary to all the evidence, believe that technology will save the day. I’m reminded of the words of C. P. Snow in his 1959 Rede Lecture on the Two Cultures - “A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: 'Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?'”
This is nonsense. The climate movement and NGOs have utterly failed. Join Just Stop Oil or one of the other civil resistance movements and force the changes.
All these terrible results were funded by the oil industry. I'd say the fight was lost centuries earlier with the US government allowing corrupt oligarchs to make rail transportation exorbitantly expensive while inventors were designing the first automobiles which gave the citizenry their alternative and ultimately enabled massive urban sprawl and the need for the automobile to travel in the US. The oil industry would still exist for synthetic goods manufacturing but be nowhere near as powerful or influential if transportation didn't require them.
I like having the ability to drive whenever I see fit without having to rely on the bus or train time availability, I can just get in my car and go to wherever I want without having to waste my time on the bus or train
Great video 🙏🏼 geoscientist here, I'm currently studying ice core records throughout the Holocene for a homework. Do you have an explanation why the temperature signal (d18O Stack) nearly always changes before the CO2 signal ? Doesn't that somehow question the causality between CO2 and temperature? This doesn't change our responsibility for modern climate change of course.
Very good question, and the answer is predictably a little more complex than a simple relationship. Skeptical Science has an excellent article on the subject (great resource for questions like this) skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
@@SimonClark so basically: the initial temperature signal comes from orbital parameter changes, triggers a positive feedback with CO2 and therefore continues to warm/cool until the next orbital parameter changes. This both explains the CO2 effecting atmospheric temperature (greenhouse) and the CO2 signal lagging behind the temperature change, right ? 😁
A situation happened yesterday that made me realize how humanity got to this perilous place. We live near the ocean in FL….. The county just sent everyone letters telling homeowners they will give us grants to put our homes on stilts to prevent future flooding. Without even thinking, my parents (Boomers) thought this was great. I on the other hand being a realist said… 🤔 “Mom, so you’re going to row yourself back and forth in a boat to get groceries in the coming years while your house sits in the water?” Her response…. “Oh Who cares, I’ll be dead by then anyways.” The lesson here is: People can’t think rationally beyond immediate needs therefore care less about what happens in a future that they can’t see themselves part of. That’s how humanity behaved in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and fast forward 50 years till now regarding climate change. It’s highly doubtful the human race is capable of changing this mindset to the scale required to reverse the damage we’ve done in time.
And the irony of his skiing photo behind Sununu and the fact HE's a major reason global warming wasn't tackled when the US needed to act. That's likely the closest thing to an actual villain incarnate you'll encounter.
They were just typical GOP pricks. Even if they didn't exist, once Ronnie Raygun was sElected, the only question was how fast the shit was going to hit the fan.
@@lorenzoblum868 Please stop spamming. The military industrial complex is a large issue, but climate change is related to all industries, not only the military one.
I love that the map of the netherlands already assumes we will claim all of the inland waters like the ijselmeer and the waters in zeeland. And can't believe that we knew about global warming and still are unable to reach effective political action.
The entire religion of global warming or climate change is based upon one fundamental misapprehension which, if you remove it, causes the entire theory or religion to collapse, and the fundamental misapprehension is that there either is or can be, any such thing as a Global temperature. It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth. A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate. Planet Earth doesn’t have ‘a temperature’, one figure that says it all. There are oceans, landmasses, ice, the atmosphere, day and night, and seasons. Also, the temperature of Earth never gets to equilibrium: just as it’s starting to warm up on the sunny-side, the sun gets ‘turned off’; and just as it’s starting to cool down on the night-side, the sun gets ‘turned on’. The ‘temperature of Earth’ is therefore as much of a contrived statistic as the GDP of a country. (If the Earth was in equilibrium, that is, if it absorbed and re-emitted the Sun’s radiation perfectly, as a ‘blackbody’, then its rotation would be irrelevant, and the temperature would be a constant 6 ⁰C. Mocking up the effects of Earth’s albedo brings the ‘blackbody’ temperature down to -18 ⁰C, and including greenhouse warming brings it back up to around 15 ⁰C.) ‘The climate’ is difficult to define: is it a trend over one decade, century, or millennium? For what sized region is it defined ? Weather is very variable - how can we go from weather to climate? Furthermore, climate change on human timescales is a very small effect, and the empirical data needed for climate models have large ‘error’ bars. If you cannot define what is changing, you cannot say it is changing; It is essential to understand that no man apprehend or experience the entire plant -the whole-thing all-at-once. You cannot even sense apprehend experience yourself - he-whole-thing, all-at-once, so how could you possibly experience something as gigantic as the planet on which you live, other than piecemeal and seriatim - little bit after little bit. If you remove the fallacy that there either is or can be, any such thing as a “Global Temperature” , the entire edifice of climate change and/or global warming, collapses, because it is contingent on the idea that there can be , or is, a “ Global Temperature, which is a thermodynamic and mathematical impossibility. While it is possible to treat temperature statistically locally, it is meaningless to talk about a global temperature for Earth. The Globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless. Or talking about economics, it does make sense to compare the currency exchange rate of two countries, whereas there is no point in talking about an average 'global exchange rate'. If temperature decreases at one point and it increases at another, the average will remain the same as before, but it will give rise to an entirely different thermodynamics and thus a different climate. If, for example, it is 10 degrees at one point and 40 degrees at another, the average is 25 degrees. But if instead there is 25 degrees both places, the average is still 25 degrees. These two cases would give rise to two entirely different types of climate, because in the former case one would have pressure differences and strong winds, while in the latter there would be no wind. You wil get bored with your religion toy soonenough or another one will become fashionable and off after that, you and the rest of the flock will go.
so the burning question: why are we not hearing more about Hansen's fee and *dividend* system? This excellent history left out the dividend part and how that bit makes pricing carbon honestly socially responsible - equitable.
spot on ! i can remember growing up in the 60s, 70s, and discussing all this at university in the 1980s. really sad misguided political agendas are screwing our future. keep up the great work!
It's becoming a convergent consensus now, everyone will agree the only choice is to remove excessive CO2 from the atmosphere (except for the ones that lie that excessive CO2 is going to help the plants).
The video definitely highlights science vs politics and business Scientists warn us about how humans are turning Earth into a hot house not seen in millions of years and politicians and businessman try to push doubt and misinformation to protect corporate profits.
It was not so much that they were protecting corporate profits as they had an Anti-science, anti-sustainability agenda. Research and development of technologies that have a lot of potential that are currently in their infancy is a profitable thing to do.
Simon, I really like your videos. Very strong writing, solid production quality (especially this one!) and you have a great, engaging voice. Please keep up the good work, I do hope you get more views going forward.
@@lorenzoblum868 i don’t think that really enters into it. If the USSR and USA could agree on the whole in the ozone layer, i don’t see how the MIC impacts this at all.
We had fully developed energy equipment that relied on sunlight, the winds, river and ocean currents and temperature differentials when Reagan took office. He stopped them from being deployed in the US. Full stop. The delay Reagan caused in deploying our own American-invented technologies was enough to allow global warming to get out of control. This was such a frustrating time to be in the renewable energy business. Markets that had seemed so promising simply vanished. So these wonderful technologies went onto the shelf for over 30 years. A few brave souls went ahead with producing their own electricity with the then-available photovoltaics panels. But without governmental support, nothing much happened.
Simon, could you please talk about ethanol subsidies, it's making things worse, we lose a huge chunk of our potential carbon sink because of this policy for very little output for the energy we put in.
"We have met the enemy and they is us." - Pogo. The American Way of Life (AWOL) is not sustainable. We blew it when we ignored Carter's (meek) warnings.
i call what he was doing climate whispering. i wasn't able to vote yet, but i really appreciated his energy talks. raygun's election totally traumatized me.
This is what my mom ment with, that there was a time in her youth, where everything seemed to move into the right direction. The fall of the soviet union, the alleged victory of democracy and humand rights, the alliviation of acid rain and the ozone problem and the open discourse on climate change. Than came Bush, 911, ...
Nordhaus later won a Nobel for his atrocious work on the economics of climate change, basically the Kissinger winning the Peace Prize equivalent for economics. Well there was also Bernanke last year.
Amazing work. Good to put name and faces to the responsables for not taking action back in the 70s and 80s. Human history will remember this people and the lack of accountability of the developed nations, fosil fuel industry and the US government.
"Sorry you got twisted up in this scene. From where you're kneeling it must seem like an 18-carat run of bad luck. Truth is... the game was rigged from the start."
Been learning about climate change on my own for the past 5 odd years. This is the most comprehensive documentary on climate change history I've ever seen. Thanks a lot, mate!
The entire religion of global warming or climate change-And on any view it is religion because based on belief or passive unquestioning acceptance, is based upon one fundamental misapprehension which, if you remove it, causes the entire theory or religion to collapse, and the fundamental misapprehension is that there either is or can be, any such thing as a Global temperature. It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth. A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate. Planet Earth doesn’t have ‘a temperature’, one figure that says it all. There are oceans, landmasses, ice, the atmosphere, day and night, and seasons. Also, the temperature of Earth never gets to equilibrium: just as it’s starting to warm up on the sunny-side, the sun gets ‘turned off’; and just as it’s starting to cool down on the night-side, the sun gets ‘turned on’. The ‘temperature of Earth’ is therefore as much of a contrived statistic as the GDP of a country. (If the Earth was in equilibrium, that is, if it absorbed and re-emitted the Sun’s radiation perfectly, as a ‘blackbody’, then its rotation would be irrelevant, and the temperature would be a constant 6 ⁰C. Mocking up the effects of Earth’s albedo brings the ‘blackbody’ temperature down to -18 ⁰C, and including greenhouse warming brings it back up to around 15 ⁰C.) ‘The climate’ is difficult to define: is it a trend over one decade, century, or millennium? For what sized region is it defined ? Weather is very variable - how can we go from weather to climate? Furthermore, climate change on human timescales is a very small effect, and the empirical data needed for climate models have large ‘error’ bars. If you cannot define what is changing, you cannot say it is changing; it is essential to understand that no man apprehend or experience the entire plant -the whole-thing all-at-once. You cannot even sense apprehend experience yourself - he-whole-thing, all-at-once, so how could you possibly experience something as relatively gigantic as the planet on which you live, other than piecemeal and seriatim - little bit after little bit. If you remove the fallacy that there either is or can be, any such thing as a “Global Temperature” , the entire edifice of climate change and/or global warming, collapses, because it is contingent on the idea that there can be , or is, a “ Global Temperature, which is a thermodynamic and mathematical impossibility. While it is possible to treat temperature statistically locally, it is meaningless to talk about a global temperature for Earth. The Globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless. Or talking about economics, it does make sense to compare the currency exchange rate of two countries, whereas there is no point in talking about an average 'global exchange rate'. If temperature decreases at one point and it increases at another, the average will remain the same as before, but it will give rise to an entirely different thermodynamics and thus a different climate. If, for example, it is 10 degrees at one point and 40 degrees at another, the average is 25 degrees. But if instead there is 25 degrees both places, the average is still 25 degrees. These two cases would give rise to two entirely different types of climate, because in the former case one would have pressure differences and strong winds, while in the latter there would be no wind.
50 years ago Klaus Schwab formed the World Economic Forum. The main focus of the world economic forum is climate change. Klaus is the main student of a liberation theology catholic archbishop Helder Camara. His other main student was pope francis. Liberation theology is marxist catholicism. Camara worked with Marcuse and Friere to push global communisim. All of this "climate crisis" cultisim is an extention of that.
@@nayrtnartsipacify Hmm, no doubt, religious fanatics ever were meddlesome trouble makers and stupefiers of the witles and degenerate. Nothing was ever unproved by religious ,mumbo jumbo and monkey business.
We shouldn't forget that people like Nuremberg, Sununu and in fact all liberaldemocratic governments didn't act out of stupidity or ignorance. They acted out of interest, economic and financial interest. There were people behind Nuremberg, capitalists.
The entire religion of global warming or climate change-And on any view it is religion because based on belief or passive unquestioning acceptance, is based upon one fundamental misapprehension which, if you remove it, causes the entire theory or religion to collapse, and the fundamental misapprehension is that there either is or can be, any such thing as a Global temperature. It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth. A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate. Planet Earth doesn’t have ‘a temperature’, one figure that says it all. There are oceans, landmasses, ice, the atmosphere, day and night, and seasons. Also, the temperature of Earth never gets to equilibrium: just as it’s starting to warm up on the sunny-side, the sun gets ‘turned off’; and just as it’s starting to cool down on the night-side, the sun gets ‘turned on’. The ‘temperature of Earth’ is therefore as much of a contrived statistic as the GDP of a country. (If the Earth was in equilibrium, that is, if it absorbed and re-emitted the Sun’s radiation perfectly, as a ‘blackbody’, then its rotation would be irrelevant, and the temperature would be a constant 6 ⁰C. Mocking up the effects of Earth’s albedo brings the ‘blackbody’ temperature down to -18 ⁰C, and including greenhouse warming brings it back up to around 15 ⁰C.) ‘The climate’ is difficult to define: is it a trend over one decade, century, or millennium? For what sized region is it defined ? Weather is very variable - how can we go from weather to climate? Furthermore, climate change on human timescales is a very small effect, and the empirical data needed for climate models have large ‘error’ bars. If you cannot define what is changing, you cannot say it is changing; it is essential to understand that no man apprehend or experience the entire plant -the whole-thing all-at-once. You cannot even sense apprehend experience yourself - he-whole-thing, all-at-once, so how could you possibly experience something as relatively gigantic as the planet on which you live, other than piecemeal and seriatim - little bit after little bit. If you remove the fallacy that there either is or can be, any such thing as a “Global Temperature” , the entire edifice of climate change and/or global warming, collapses, because it is contingent on the idea that there can be , or is, a “ Global Temperature, which is a thermodynamic and mathematical impossibility. While it is possible to treat temperature statistically locally, it is meaningless to talk about a global temperature for Earth. The Globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless. Or talking about economics, it does make sense to compare the currency exchange rate of two countries, whereas there is no point in talking about an average 'global exchange rate'. If temperature decreases at one point and it increases at another, the average will remain the same as before, but it will give rise to an entirely different thermodynamics and thus a different climate. If, for example, it is 10 degrees at one point and 40 degrees at another, the average is 25 degrees. But if instead there is 25 degrees both places, the average is still 25 degrees. These two cases would give rise to two entirely different types of climate, because in the former case one would have pressure differences and strong winds, while in the latter there would be no wind.
I remember writing and calling my elected officials so many times during that period, and protesting at every opportunity, and it was like I and the few by my side didn't even exist. It still makes me so incredibly angry! My sons will have to live with the consequences of what MY generation was unable to stop, and that breaks - shatters - my spirit. 😢 I'm almost thankful I have to grandchildren as of yet, in fact. 🥺
The entire religion of global warming or climate change-And on any view it is religion because based on belief or passive unquestioning acceptance, is based upon one fundamental misapprehension which, if you remove it, causes the entire theory or religion to collapse, and the fundamental misapprehension is that there either is or can be, any such thing as a Global temperature. It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth. A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate. Planet Earth doesn’t have ‘a temperature’, one figure that says it all. There are oceans, landmasses, ice, the atmosphere, day and night, and seasons. Also, the temperature of Earth never gets to equilibrium: just as it’s starting to warm up on the sunny-side, the sun gets ‘turned off’; and just as it’s starting to cool down on the night-side, the sun gets ‘turned on’. The ‘temperature of Earth’ is therefore as much of a contrived statistic as the GDP of a country. (If the Earth was in equilibrium, that is, if it absorbed and re-emitted the Sun’s radiation perfectly, as a ‘blackbody’, then its rotation would be irrelevant, and the temperature would be a constant 6 ⁰C. Mocking up the effects of Earth’s albedo brings the ‘blackbody’ temperature down to -18 ⁰C, and including greenhouse warming brings it back up to around 15 ⁰C.) ‘The climate’ is difficult to define: is it a trend over one decade, century, or millennium? For what sized region is it defined ? Weather is very variable - how can we go from weather to climate? Furthermore, climate change on human timescales is a very small effect, and the empirical data needed for climate models have large ‘error’ bars. If you cannot define what is changing, you cannot say it is changing; it is essential to understand that no man apprehend or experience the entire plant -the whole-thing all-at-once. You cannot even sense apprehend experience yourself - he-whole-thing, all-at-once, so how could you possibly experience something as relatively gigantic as the planet on which you live, other than piecemeal and seriatim - little bit after little bit. If you remove the fallacy that there either is or can be, any such thing as a “Global Temperature” , the entire edifice of climate change and/or global warming, collapses, because it is contingent on the idea that there can be , or is, a “ Global Temperature, which is a thermodynamic and mathematical impossibility. While it is possible to treat temperature statistically locally, it is meaningless to talk about a global temperature for Earth. The Globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless. Or talking about economics, it does make sense to compare the currency exchange rate of two countries, whereas there is no point in talking about an average 'global exchange rate'. If temperature decreases at one point and it increases at another, the average will remain the same as before, but it will give rise to an entirely different thermodynamics and thus a different climate. If, for example, it is 10 degrees at one point and 40 degrees at another, the average is 25 degrees. But if instead there is 25 degrees both places, the average is still 25 degrees. These two cases would give rise to two entirely different types of climate, because in the former case one would have pressure differences and strong winds, while in the latter there would be no wind.
Venus is interesting, and I'm sceptical. Temp on Venus is 400°C with 98% CO² @ 92bar or 92x the pressure of the Earths atmosphere. Considering that the IR radiation is twice (1/0.7²) as intense on Venus also (because Venus is much closer to the Sun) CO² on Venus acts quite differently than it does on Earth. Considering temperature of a gas is directly proportional to its pressure, then Venus is 92x warmer due to the pressure created by IR trapped by the atmosphere (of almost pure CO²). For comparison, if we calculate the pressure @ 1 bar (like CO² is on Earth), then the temperature of Venus would be 400/92=4.34°c, which is @ 2x the IR exposure. So with this very rough estimate of just how much 98% CO² @ 1bar would warm the planet Venus, the answer is about 2.1°C. Venus has only trace amounts of H²O, which is probably why 98% CO² is having such a weak effect on the temperature of Venus, either that, or consider the fact that CO² has hardly any effect on temperature at all. Even Eunice Foote in 1857 proved that 100% CO² @ 120° only had about a 20% higher temperature than 'common air' at 100°. I ask then, what would 0.02% CO² do to the actual temperature compared to say 0.04%? That's a relative doubling of the CO² level, but it doesn't result in doubling of the temperature. The actual increase is still just 0.02%, and the linear effect on temperature is minimal to say the least according to Eunice Foote. The 1°C rise in global temperature on Earth since 1850, irregardless of the error margins in the data (which increasingly quickly become more precise since 1850), is more than likely caused either by the error margins, by H²O or the Sun, rather than it is created by the 0.02% rise in CO² in the Earths atmosphere since 1850. If CO² , the same gas on both planets, is having logically the same effect on Earth as it is on Venus, then we might consider the effect of just how 98% CO² on Venus can be compared to the 0.04% CO² on Earth. In this scenario CO² would be almost impossible to trace in the global temperature measurement of Venus, as 0.04% of 2.1° is practically nothing. The effect is as hard to trace in the Earths atmosphere (the reason why CO² is a trace gas). At least, the derived warming effect of 0.02% extra CO² certainly disappears in the substantial errors margins that have been historically present whilst measuring global world temperature trends since 1850. It is known that the error margins of early mercury thermometers, and the methods for air temperature collection (bucket measurements at sea) have given such a collectively large error margin early on, that even a 1° rise in global temperatures is easily lost in the error margins in the data. In any case, it is very hard to pin it all on a 0.02% rise in CO² over 100 years. It is also true to say that the meter or granularity of historical measurements of global temperature before the invention of the thermometer is far greater than 100 years. The meter of temperature measurements is more like a 1000 years depending on how far you go back. 500.000.000 years is 5 million thousand year data points, and we have no idea if the temperature has moved up and down within these 1000 year data points by any degree. It could be that the temperature averages out at some value over a thousand years, but it does not precisely tell us if historically the actual temperature varied by + or - any amount over shorter periods. Even if accurate, +1° over 100 years is well within the range of global temperatures that have been calculated in the past within the meter of a thousand years, and if the temperature goes down at some point within the next 900 years, the global average might not look so scary and be perfectly on track.
Babe wake up, it's time to watch capitalogenic climate change lore, the prologue to the largest mass extinction since the end-Permian :) (Seriously though, thank you for this, Simon).
You need 5000 to 10000 ppm or even 30000 ppm (the Higherst estimative of carbon dioxide on Permian) to reach such disaster. The global temperatures was around 32°C.
I was born in 1996 and for my entire life I've been listening to adults talking and discussing global warming and climate change. It breaks my heart to know that I became an adult only now when is too late for my vote to change something.
12:40 The idea that global agricultural productivity could decline by a third and it basically wouldn't make a difference seems like the kind of thing only an economist could believe
GDP has no bearing on regular people but it represents how much money the owning class is making so that's why it's able to go up even as the US de-industrializes. Non productive industries like finance and services inflate the GDP despite producing little to nothing for the average person.
@@oliverwilson11 it's nasa data .born out by agricultural production records .You can take it or leave it Depending on how much of an alarmist you are .
Today photovoltaics of the cheapest form of energy closely followed by wind. Just imagine how much better they would be if countries with a well educated population took research and development of these technologies seriously 50 years ago.
@@alwynwatson6119 there is no "clean" energy. There is greed, hence corruption... Btw, the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex anybody?
If you want to know climate deniers motivation, follow the money... Btw, the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex?
It's popular in some circles to blame all the world's problems on the Boomers. I'd just like to point out that none of the bad guys in this tale were Boomers. They were members of the "Greatest Generation".
im so happy you made these. i've been waiting for bobbybroccoli to make a video about my concentration, as a meteorologist/climatologist. amazing stuff, and great work piecing together so much!!!
Back then, it would have actually made sense to switch from coal to large scale nuclear power. There was enough time for the long construction times and embodied emissions of construction to be offset by the low carbon power the reactors would produce. Now its too late to do this, as we would blow our remaining carbon budget we need to keep below 2 degrees before we could build the generators.
As a born and raised cape codder, you’ve committed one of the cardinal sins: it’s ON cape cod, not IN cape cod! The folks at WHOI are fantastic, loved going there in field trips
There is a glaring error of fact in this video, and that is the idea that we require advanced technological means to "decarbonize" our economy, means that the author claims, "were still in their infancy" in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Nothing could be further from the truth. In actual fact, "more and better" technology cannot rescue us from the consequences of mismanaging the technologies which caused this problem in the first place, and the solutions we needs are not technological in nature, at all. The real problem is a political problem, stemming from our relationship to Nature, not some sort of lack of the right technology. It is land policy-globally, not just in the US and other technologically advanced, highly consumptive countries-that is the root of the problem. The two largest factors in consumption are transportation and HVAC, and by changing how we use vehicles, buildings, and land, we could dramatically reduce our waste of natural resources to a level of consumption which is sustainable. This is not a problem that can be solved by solar panels and lithium-ion batteries. It is a problem that can only be solved by conservation, which can only plausibly be achieved by eliminating sprawl, to obviate the need to substitute the egregiously lavish consumption of energy resources for wiser choices. "Supply side environmentalism"-the idea that we can continue our wasteful lifestyles and "technology" will somehow produce "clean energy"-is a pipe dream that is killing us all. We must address demand, first and foremost.
Wonderful video. Between governments that don’t take action because of big corporations lobbying and a population hooked up on meat more than it has ever been, it sometimes feels like I’m mourning a dying planet. People don’t want to take action because “The end of the world has been anounced many times and “nothing happened”, why would this one be any different?”. It’s so hard being optimistic some days.
Well there's been several "lost" years. But by the time leading up to the Kyoto protocol, lots of officials were fully aware of what was going to happen, that's the period where we went fully off course. So the mid-90's to 2005: certainly if it had been taken seriously and been worked on steadily since then, we would be much further along, and have more time going forward till tipping points are reached.
I got my degree in electronic engineering technology, not meteorology, but I had a lot of credit hours studying the propagation of EM waves through different media. The classroom and lab work showed exactly how global warming wa described decades before I heard of global warming. The science is not new, and is proven, we just didn't know the consequences and extent.
You can't forecast the behaviour of a chaotic, non linear system 100 years into the future. You would have done a little bit of fluid dynamics in your early years?
The entire religion of global warming or climate change-And on any view it is religion because based on belief or passive unquestioning acceptance, is based upon one fundamental misapprehension which, if you remove it, causes the entire theory or religion to collapse, and the fundamental misapprehension is that there either is or can be, any such thing as a Global temperature. It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth. A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate. Planet Earth doesn’t have ‘a temperature’, one figure that says it all. There are oceans, landmasses, ice, the atmosphere, day and night, and seasons. Also, the temperature of Earth never gets to equilibrium: just as it’s starting to warm up on the sunny-side, the sun gets ‘turned off’; and just as it’s starting to cool down on the night-side, the sun gets ‘turned on’. The ‘temperature of Earth’ is therefore as much of a contrived statistic as the GDP of a country. (If the Earth was in equilibrium, that is, if it absorbed and re-emitted the Sun’s radiation perfectly, as a ‘blackbody’, then its rotation would be irrelevant, and the temperature would be a constant 6 ⁰C. Mocking up the effects of Earth’s albedo brings the ‘blackbody’ temperature down to -18 ⁰C, and including greenhouse warming brings it back up to around 15 ⁰C.) ‘The climate’ is difficult to define: is it a trend over one decade, century, or millennium? For what sized region is it defined ? Weather is very variable - how can we go from weather to climate? Furthermore, climate change on human timescales is a very small effect, and the empirical data needed for climate models have large ‘error’ bars. If you cannot define what is changing, you cannot say it is changing; it is essential to understand that no man apprehend or experience the entire plant -the whole-thing all-at-once. You cannot even sense apprehend experience yourself - he-whole-thing, all-at-once, so how could you possibly experience something as relatively gigantic as the planet on which you live, other than piecemeal and seriatim - little bit after little bit. If you remove the fallacy that there either is or can be, any such thing as a “Global Temperature” , the entire edifice of climate change and/or global warming, collapses, because it is contingent on the idea that there can be , or is, a “ Global Temperature, which is a thermodynamic and mathematical impossibility. While it is possible to treat temperature statistically locally, it is meaningless to talk about a global temperature for Earth. The Globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless. Or talking about economics, it does make sense to compare the currency exchange rate of two countries, whereas there is no point in talking about an average 'global exchange rate'. If temperature decreases at one point and it increases at another, the average will remain the same as before, but it will give rise to an entirely different thermodynamics and thus a different climate. If, for example, it is 10 degrees at one point and 40 degrees at another, the average is 25 degrees. But if instead there is 25 degrees both places, the average is still 25 degrees. These two cases would give rise to two entirely different types of climate, because in the former case one would have pressure differences and strong winds, while in the latter there would be no wind.
Jeff Benzos just bought a yacht for half a billion dollars. There. Now I feel less helpless about the catastrophe I have seen the world heading towards.
I just watched this video on Nebula and came here specifically to say bravo. Strangely I got around 40 science channels I subscribed to but your videos never came across on my feed. Hmmm. Anyway I subbed here too.
It is painful to listen to the same exact arguments from 40-50 years ago than we are seeing / hearing today. "uncertainty" "bad models" "its the sun" "its natural outgassing" Also frustrating because the ones telling us what is wrong and where we are heading are always adding the "there is still time" - which just makes it less urgent... i mean it delivers a false sense of security that "no need to panic, we can fix it... maybe tomorrow... by someone else... today... i will use my private jet again" ...
This is one of the most comprehensive and brilliant presentations on this topic I have seen. This has become one of my bookmarks, and I will be reviewing often. Thank you.
Shell oil company came out with video in the early 1990's explaining the damage CO2 run amok will do to the climate. It can be found on the internet. By the way I worked for shell oil co doing QC for fifteen years. Sorry, I didn't know in1979 when I started amount the damage of CO2.
Yeah, I worked for Chevron and we watched videos and had to pass a little test on Climate Change. The Refinery Manager gave his yearly business meeting with all of us. He said there was a “large human component to Climate Change “ . It fell on deaf ears. Sadly.
@@JoeMmt347 , sadly MY EARS were deaf at my own choice. I was more worried that I wouldn't get my favorite doughnut. I thought " oh we will cross that bridge when we get to it sadly not realizing wE were ALREADY WELL ONTO THE BRIDGE. Many Christians belive we can trash the planet cause jesus will come back and rapture them leaving the wrecked earth to the sinners. Most have no interest in simple science actually claiming science is the work of the devil. So twenty percent of the adult population simply refuse to even listen. We are in dire straits.
The Marshall Institute. 15 years ago I found out about them. I then also found out how successful their campaign of confusion was. Thanks for this great video.
If you enjoyed the video, please do give it a like and share it with people who you think will also enjoy it! This is a story I think everyone should hear.
If you would like to support my work then you can do so by:
- Signing up with Brilliant: www.brilliant.org/simonclark
- Buy my book on the history of atmospheric science, Firmament: geni.us/firmament
- Sign up for my monthly newsletter: eepurl.com/ihPiX5
You should do an interview with Steve Keen to do a deep dive on how badly mainstream economists have trivialized the economic consequences. it's mind boggling.
Excellent video, thanks!
and we are watching the same thing happen all over again in real time
Hey Simon, love your stuff!
I've seen a video on DonutMedia about some eFuel/synthetic gasoline that Porsche is making in Chile which is "eco friendly": they captures CO2 from the atmosphere and water and run the whole thing on green energy (why they are in Chile), but running an engine still ends up releasing CO2, so it ends up being "neutral".
Would love your analysis on efficiency of the whole process, since there is the whole tradeoff of green energy vs distance to customers and such.
Good report. One minor correction: John Sununu's name should be pronounced with the stress on the second syllable. Older US news broadcasts consistently pronounce it that way, such as the introduction in this interview:
ruclips.net/video/YnC0seSAYSg/видео.html
I've always thought that the fixing of the ozone hole problem was one of the few (if not only) moments in history where governments came together to fix a problem for the better of society in stead of purely helping the people in charge. Hearing that it basically only happened because du pont saw an opportunity for profit makes a lot more sense and makes me very sad....
The stratospheric ozone is in the worst condition ever. Don't be fooled. Every rocket launch shreds more ozone, and nuclear testing was much more devastating to the ozone layer than hairspray or refrigerant. UV-C is now hitting Earth's surface. Best to you!
🥺
@@christinearmington 🤗
Plant more trees and plants nearby your surrounding to fight the Climate warming issues 🙏🏽🇮🇳
It gets worse. If oil company executives weren’t stuck in the past they would’ve seen the potential profitability of using their existing offshore and drilling technology to provide the world with abundant sustainable energy from offshore wind and geothermal. So for climate change to exist at all The people in power from the 1970s onwards would’ve had to have been stupid as well as evil.
The fact that I could've grown up in a world that was already fighting climate change instead of a world where we're barely starting is crazy
Edit: I don't want people to read this message and get all hopeless, idk exactly how to word it, but just because we're starting now, doesn't mean we shouldn't start. There is still time to make a change and we should keep fighting to make a change. It sucks that the stupid fuel industry has really given us a setback, but that's only more of a reason to fight back. We can't let those assholes win.
So true. It's like we have just started running a marathon when the other runner is already at the finishing line.
Great advances have been made. 1950's and 1960's were the two worst decades for smog. The clean air act of 1970 was passed unanimously by both parties. And gradually America's air quality has Improved. No way I would go back to that era.
I'm sorry but I'm afraid my generation failed you. I'm 63 years old now and a lifelong environmental activist but the vast majority of Americans of my generation have done little to nothing to change their ways... At this point I'm very glad my wife and I decided not to have children so we don't have to explain to them why they're so screwed 😢
Humans are producing more co2 daily. We are doing the reverse of progress.
@@oneirishpoet I just hope that maybe my generation save even the tiniest little bit for the next one
If the tobacco industry could be fined hundreds of millions for deliberately hiding the deadliness of tobacco, how much is the price for knowing you are creating a climatic apocalypse and funding "research" to say you're not for fifty years?
...man this is too depressing knowing noone will be put to justice for this
It's really sad. Because we don't value the things we already destroyed.
For example, a forest being deforested and the deforested land is used as a farm or for other uses.
But the amount of trees that were destroyed, won't be reversed by re planting them.
What's lost is lost. So, the price they need to pay is impossible because it's gone. So there's no way to tell
The next best thing is to ensure gasoline and other products like gasoline will never be used again as fuel sources, but as those fuel sources are one of the most energy-dense source of fuels they will always be needed for some stuff. We can’t even get a symbolic victory of learning from our lesson and ensuring we can rid ourselves of the objects that were marketed that got us into this place. We might lessen land transportation, use nuclear energy and some other renewable sources when appropriate, learn how to reconstruct forests and seas to be sort of back to the way they were, hunt overpopulating stuff to give others a chance, and maybe even successfully eradicate invasive species and even heavily restrict overseas travel, but all are mitigatory efforts. We will never have a good climate for humans for a very long time nor will we realize the actual extent of damage or what we lost, and we can’t even make efforts to at least wean off permanently gasoline and diesel and natural gas simply because they are too energy-dense.
In short? They’ve pretty much won. They got their profits, and given that everything is monopolized now, their companies will always stand.
An inapt analogy, given that the exact opposite religion(anti-smoking tobacco)gave rise to the simple lie that smoking tobacco*causes* cancer, which is demonstrably untrue - certainly in the cases of the writer who smoked billions of cigarettes without any cancer for seventy plus years.
The traditional punishment only happens after civilization falls. Mob violence from the survivors toward the blamed.
I live in Massachusetts. I remember when Sununu was Governor of New Hampshire and Massachusetts was complaining about the pollution coming down the Merrimack River from the industrial cities of Concord, Manchester and Nashua. Sununu said: “pollution is just a byproduct of progress”.
This is what I think of when I hear his name.
And now in numerous cities of China, they drive cars with headlights on during the day because the smog is so thick… And all aquatic life has been poisoned, as well as the people; the price of progress with fossil fuels is tragic
Don't confuse carbon with pollution.
@@ValMartinIreland Excess carbon is pollution, 1, and 2, I assume any pollution in water would be visible, meaning it'll likely not be carbon.
"pollution is just a byproduct of progress" lmao, Sununu could have just been a Soviet party leader in the 1970s/80s with that sentence XD, Soviet Sununu XD.
He was simply pond scum.
"Your government is f*cking this up" should go down in history as a quote that perfectly sums up how the US handled this
Like they do most things.
Ooooh, I'll bet that the Oil Companies that funded the sabotage evidence would be rilly, rilly scared if we abolished an elected government. I prefer that we abolish ignorance in Voters and we imprison proven criminals IN government. There's a reason why people abolished monarchies and chose self-rule and the elected government. Catch up, won't you?
To b fair Most governments r f*cking this up, so US is in good/poor/lazy/selfish company
History will be read by nobody .
..how govornments handle everything
If anything, I think this shows that the real "villain" in this story is Nirenberg. Sununu did what he did out of ignorance. However Nirenberg, like you said, knew what he was doing. If anything, Sununu was merely an ignorant pawn manipulated and set in motion by a man who wanted this to happen for whatever reason.
Big Oil's cash.
Big Oil / Skull and Bones / military industrial complex...
Btw, the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the MIC anybody?
if anything, the real villain of the story is just human greed.
@@somebodyhere3160 100%. The military industrial complex and corruption being the prime consequence of greed.
I am old enough to know Sununu . He was a typical GOP prick who would do whatever is required to protect industry from "tree huggers"
One of the many sad outcomes is that these people, who deliberately lied to citizens causing enormous damage, will never pay for their crimes. There should be a wall of shame with these people quoted as the criminals they were/are.
Completely agree
If they died, resurrect them and delete them again😅
I agree, I am one of those people who believes that there should be statues of, and monuments to, horrible people that have damaged this world, but with evident plaques describing exactly who they were and what damage they caused. Every bust of Hitler was removed after the war but I think every major capital should get one situated near their government building as a warning of what happens when you abuse the power of those buildings. People might be less inclined to be malevolent if they were reminded that their infamy would stay in the public eye for a very long time.
yeah kinda like covid.
Sounds like your talking about the Covid pandemic. my bad
“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.”
- John Kenneth Galbraith
Guy McPherson also said this and I believe to be true
A bit more of a detailed video ruclips.net/video/yOhpLVFbAGk/видео.html
By destroying us all!
Yup because only people who’d rather get rich or die trying get and stay rich
I think he is the guy who warned against, "the miltary industrial complex" and their power to destroy USA demorcay.
In the 50's my dad owned an oil drilling company, making million$. He quit and started taking our family around the US to show us the destructions of man: drilling, clear cutting, soil pollution. He tried in vain to tell people in the petro industry that we had to change our ways or all would be lost. They didn't care, or change. Thanks for trying Dad.
Your father is rare giving up millions because he felt guilty. But most of these oil rich jerks only want one thing, a big bank account.
Simon, I teach climate change in universities. I also tell my students about what Reagon, Nirenberg, George C Marshall had done to fool people, but not in a way as compelling as you did. I am sure my students will enjoy watching this RUclips video. Thanks so much for the great efforts. Bravo!
Thank you so much for educating people my age 🙏🏼 not many of my friends outside of academia believe me
ruclips.net/video/4TmeRU_L0mo/видео.html
Please share your knowledge too if you can on this platform. Best.
One might presume that teaching involved at least some degree of accuracy in the dissemination of information to malleable young minds? Your comment displays room for improvement in this essential requirement. Namely, Reagan (not Reagon) and Nierenberg (not Nirenberg).
@@carleddison7479why bother with accuracy or truth when you can substitute brainwashing for teaching.
I had the book "Global 2000 - The report for the President", when I was young. The predictions for climate change were pretty accurate. Jimmy Carter was a far better US president (and person) than people gave him credit for.
As with so many things: "Then came Reagan, and things turned far worse"
The first thing clown Ronald did was to take down the solar panels from the roof of the White House...
Btw, the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex Mina ?
@@lorenzoblum868 Unfortunately, Reagan (and his British mate Thatcher) was one of the most consequential presidents, ever. The heritage of their neoliberal politics still lingers around. Also, the terrible approach "be chaste and don't be gay!" towards the AIDS epidemic killed so many people.
"The long term impact of atmospheric carbon dioxide on climate", 1979
irp.fas.org/agency/dod/jason/co2.pdf
Who woulda thunk a Hollywood maniac would do a nasty job controlling the most powerful empire in the world.
I think you are the first person I have ever heard say that. You must be a millenial.
This kinda hurts to watch, seeing how far back we knew it was a problem all laid out in this way is kinda heartbreaking especially when viewed today, when it’s now a very partisan issue. It’s so frustrating that if just a few things had gone slightly differently we could be living in a much better world today
We still live in that better world but after 2050 we not
The funny thing is that it’s really not a partisan issue. There’s no pro-nuclear party, just parties that pretend to care and parties that don’t.
If we done a few things slightly differently in the Victorian era we would’ve stopped burning fossil fuels by 1900. Not because of climate change you understand but because fossil fuels are not economically viable when compared to the alternatives that could’ve been developed in the Victorian era. But they’re also an ethical to. Coal was dug up using slavery and child labour.
@@mushyroom9569 mAkE tHe cArS aLL EvS tHaTlL fIx ThE iSsuE
The carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex anybody?
it always comes down to reaganomics, amazing, this man only missed
Unless the goal was doing nothing but damage, in which case he never missed and continues not to.
First thing Ronald the clown did was talking down the solar panels from the roof of the White House...
Btw, the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex anybody?
@@lorenzoblum868 no you dont understand, the military is totally necessary, we definetly need them to overthrow slightly left wing governments in the global south
So did John Hinkley.
Conservatives love Reagan.
But he nearly tripled the National Debt and started the decline of the middle class. GHW Bush was correct when he called Reagan’s “trickle down” economics Voodoo. There is no trickling down. What we get when we reduce taxes on the very wealthy is a bubbling up.
"If you demand a villain your man..."
"RONALD REAGAN!"
"...is John Sununu"
"oh."
That's the exact reaction I'd expect from a mouth breather
Politician really said that our crops and products are only 3% from outdoors and won’t be affected by climate is absolutely crazy man
Hi Simon, I am a meteorologist and really enjoy your videos. You do a phenomenal job at explaining the science of our atmosphere! I must say, I bought your book and would definitely recommend it for those who want to learn about the history of atmospheric science and the basics of how our atmosphere works.
I hope Simon mentioned the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex...
@@lorenzoblum868 by what metric is carbon toxic. When all life is dependent on it .toxicity is measured by the LD 50 test .what exactly has carbon to do with the military apart from the fact that all personell are carbon based life forms .
@@andrewtrip8617
1. Carbon footprint
2. Toxicity footprint = all toxic compounds/elements / waste.....
So painful to watch the calamity playing out, but so thankful for your time, effort and skill to tell this important story, Simon. Thank you
The carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex Cameron?
A more channel that goes into more detail ruclips.net/video/yOhpLVFbAGk/видео.html
@@lorenzoblum868 Are you a apid or full-time activist? You keep posting the same thing. How many GT of CO2 did the US military emit last year. How about China Baowu Steel Group?
Its modern hysterical religious bullshite. Ireland is just as cold now as it was in 1960
i watch it all unfold for 70 years and it hurts to see how backward and uncaring we have become. Even Greta is not a hero to many people it's so sad.
It is maddening to see how a small, but well-connected handful of bad actors could have such an influence on global policy...
That’s the nature of globalized capitalism. You will never have democracy unless you have economic democracy
@@andrewcheadle948 you do realize the ipcc has no power right… it just does research and makes suggestions. They don’t hold political power like billionaires with lobbying power or politicians. Stop being stupid
@@andrewcheadle948 how can you be this ignorant?
It would have been someone else if not them specifically
Not jusy IPCc but Al and Greta .
Seen a documentary from 1973 that pleaded for wind and solar energy because of sustainability and global warming, we really lost about 1/2 a century.
Oppenheimer: "I am become death, destroy of worlds"
William Nierenberg: "Hold my beer"
As someone who watched Oppenheimer last night, this hits _way_ too hard
@@SimonClark Whilst watching Oppenheimer I couldn't help feeling I'd wished they'd made the film about the Merchants of Doubt instead.
What an absolutely brilliant piece of art, Simon!
It was a hard watch, especially seeing how so few people can have such a huge and long-term impact on our lives.
This is most definitely of the most informative youtube videos I've ever seen! Great job Simon!
Too bad Big Brother Algorithm won't let him mention the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex...
@@lorenzoblum868 ridiculous. we can mention that.
Here is a better more detailed channel/video ruclips.net/video/yOhpLVFbAGk/видео.html
@@Matty18795 By that you mean misinformation. Why is it always yanks promoting falsehoods and conspiracy theories? Herr Goebbels would be immensely proud of your work!
It's amazing how deeply sad such a matter of fact video could make me. Thank you for your hard work Simon - most deserved like I've ever given.
This is phenomenal! It's such a complicated and serious topic, yet it's presented in a very engaging way. Probably my favorite video among all videos I've watched so far in 2023.
Agreed. This channel is great overall.
Thank you for compiling things together so we’ll. I still meet people who don’t believe it, and it’s heartbreaking. I’ve gotten to the point “It doesn’t matter what you believe, it will happen, and it will because of people who think just like you.”
Most deniers are on the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex's payroll...
It's not simply that people don't believe that our climate is changing, they are not all convinced that humans are the main cause.
The terrible thing is that it all (generally) comes down to the US' political philosophies breeding stubbornness to the point of everything else.
it's not a US philosophy. it's a capitalist philosophy, look around the world and you'll see similar stories
yar, that part at the end really got me. While in the US, being able to point at the handful of people from the US that deliberately stonewalled meaningful international policy and thus killing hope of giving our place up to our grandchildren and great grandchildren, the real roadblock as Reagan demonstrated was already baked the Red vs Blue two-party political system.
Basically how the Bork Nomination Hearings sparked off a war of destructive, no compromise, war for a small faction within the GOP that culminated with that small faction gaining near total control of the RNC by the Reagan era. There has significant drop in bi-partisanship on Capital Hill since those events largely because of this Zero-Sum 'Us vs Them' mentality that has rooted itself firmly in the GOP/RNC policies. As Simon points out at the end of the video, there was already a strong divide between Red and Blue simply because Blue supported Climate Advocacy, therefore Red automatically took it on themselves to oppose it for no greater reason than to use it as a means to oppose Blue by proxy.
Edit: If you read this far, I should mention that the Bork thing was Dem's doing the thing I just described the RNC still do, but at least I dont see the Dems continuing to uphold a grudge that throws the entire earth and all future generations under the bus after 40+ years after the fact.
Government is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex ~ Frank Zappa?
Btw, the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex anybody?
Lol. It's one political philosophy. Entrench the wealth of the already wealthy even it costs the rest of humanity.
That stubbornness is what broke the USSR, and brought the idea of limited government and individual ownership of weapons to the world. It’s a double edged sword, but it’s slain some dragons in its time. Have a care for Chesterton’s Fence.
Hearing an enthusiastic call for a "new cool idea: Carbon Tax" in 1988 gave me an aneurism when it seems nothing has really changed, the conversation 35 years later is still "we need to think about this cool new idea of a Carbon Tax no one has done before". We still don't have a real Carbon Tax anywhere in the world.
Australia had one for a little while and it worked.
Because it’s anti human, carbon tax is the equivalent to a surveillance state. Do you really want every aspect of your life scrutinised?
EU ETS is fine
@@winstonsmasterplan what?
@@kastanie7445 carbon tax isn’t achievable without technology facilitating the ‘accurate’ tracking of individual movement & consumption. We are being nudged towards a totalitarian system of mass surveillance under the banner of climate change.
It passes me off that Regan died in 2004 before he could see how much he messed everything up
And before we learned what we always suspected. The Iran hostages were deliberately kept captive until Reagan got elected.
And people still praise this dude becuz guess what ‘my pay and life standards is a tiny bit better therefore the government is amazing and all actions justified”. And jimmy carter is still condemned for just being in leadership during the Iranian siege
Reagan is probably the biggest piece of sh1t politician to ever be elected. People have know clue how bad he screwed this country and world up. May he rot in he11
Reagan lost the plot of what was going on long before he died.
He was an actor so he would not care
It has multiple villains, billionaires whilst one of the two biggest ones are Rupert Murdoch and Henry Kissinger.
The biggest Henchman being Ronald Reagan.
What jumped out to me was how big a part the two ecoconomists had in this.
Perhaps economists should also be required to study more anthropology and history, because their view of the world through economics does strike me as often being narrow.
their "arguments" were being made in bad faith; with the same success you could say that technological progress will fix climate change 200 years in the future and today there's absolutely nothing to worry about. it's poppycock, but many will buy it, which is the point of such arguments. other economists have been pointing out for decades that the world will be poorer if climate change continues unabated.
You make a great point!
Economists should never be involved in any of these kinds of decisions, because profits over people is their highest believe and any change to the status quo is more expensive than just doing nothing.
@@07Flash11MRC I don't think that's always true. For example, giving homeless people a house for free is theorized to be more cost effective than jailing and hospitalizing them.
I just think our current economic theory mostly worships short term profit, as you mentioned.
@@SpinningSideKick9000 It's not "theorized", it's been proven already which is why smart countries like Finnland do just that. You just proved my point. The only reason for economists to do things (meaning changing the status quo) is when it's economically useful for them, not out of the kindness of their heart or them caring for other people. And even then, when you consider countries like the US they don't even do the right thing when it is economically sound.
THANK YOU. This is an epic, necessary, concise and succint summary of how we got here. Amazing production.
Where is here? You make it sound like a bad place.
Humanity has flourished as temperatures rise and fail as it falls.
@@1donniekak That is historically incorrect. Humnaity has flourished in a period called the Holocene wich was remarkably stable.
Humanity is bringing this period to an end. We are currently in the process of the fourth mass extinction
@@Youbetternowatchthisyou wish!
@@tcraigh1 yawn.
@@Youbetternowatchthis Actually it's the sixth!
An informative but angering video. To know that we could've definitely avoided 1.5C without extreme measures
Keep up the great work!
but just think
if we had acted back then,
and taken the problem seriously
as adults with some degree of responsibility and foresight,
instead of children raiding the proverbial candy store,
we'd have been out the past many decades of excess.
our computers would be a little slower and probably a bit more expensive.
we might have fewer cars, and have to hold on to them longer.
the landfills would be without so many layers of yearly replaced ifones.
instead of rampant suburbanism with 3 trucks in every driveway,
we'd have focused on living more efficiently, with less waste, which might have forced us to move closer together and make our cities nicer and more livable, with dense public transportation networks instead of five layered cloverleaf junctions and stripmalls from coast to coast.
there'd probably also be fewer of us. And we'd live leaner, healthier, longer lives.
things would be less rushed.
probably jet travel would be very much diminished, along with all wasteful high-emission and nonessential frivolties for which sustainable alternatives exist.
maybe we'd take it slow and cross the oceans on ships again. take 3-4 days to go from a port in Europe to NYC for example. And so what?
What's the uncertainty on your 1.5 degrees over 100years global average? +/- 0.1 C? 0.25 C?
Superb Simon, I taught EES (Earth & Enviornmental Science) and physics at high school (Pre uni in Australia) until retiring 5 years ago. Worked for Shell London 1981 and then EXXON/Mobil, Esso Australia 1982 to 1986 as a petroleum geologist, finding and producing heaps of oil and gas. EXXON never told us about what they knew, I am glad I didn't know or I would have resigned and done something else. So lucky to have moved across to teaching and spent the following 30 years honing this stuff. I wish we had your amazing renditions then, I would have used them. I have learned so much from you since retiring on this subject. Eg we always did the standard Greenhouse effect with the atrmosphere simply acting like a greenhouse, you showed that it is not like that, it is a result of energy being emiited to space at higher cooler levels in the atmosphere due to the increased CO2 below and by the steffan boltzman law (sorry re spelling here buffs) the energy trapped below is temp to the power 4. ie if it gets emiited at 2C with low CO2 but at 0 C at higher CO2 at a higher altitude then it 2 to the power 4 as much energy is trapped in the lower atmosphere. Or your one about carbon 13 reducing in the atmosphere over recent time due to fossil fuel burning, just a sibliome proof of it is humans making the CO2 that is causiing the climate change. So simple, so neat. Thankyou.
I was at the House of Reps. hearing in 1980, and still remember Al Gore asking questions to Roger Revelle. It made a huge impression on me. One of the last questions Revelle answered was related to forecasts/if we did nothing, where would sea levels be, and Revelle said something about the water would be lapping at the steps of the Capitol. There was, as I remember, a moment of dead silence. And the gavel came down and the hearing was adjourned. People filed out as if nothing had happened. The reason why this was so memorable was the apparent lack of reaction (or disbelief perhaps) on the part of many people there. Thank you for your video.
Because they all knew he was crazy
It's very hard to say in hindsight whether the technology would have been available. Had there been serious investment from back then in research fir solar panels, wind turbines and innovative nuclear technologies, we could have leapfrogged 10-15 years ahead compared to where we are today. Also a contributing factor were the relatively low oil prices in the mid 1980s to mid 2000s, so there was no economic incentive to move away from oil.
uhm, no, i disagree. one example of germany, my native country: during the 2000s we were world leaders in solar panel production actually. then because of some political givings, the industry faltered, companies went to asia and today we buy from china. currently, our current infrastructure minister is lobbying against a ban on combustion engines with other eu countries who rely on their car manufacturing industry. the technology has been in drawers or could have been today where we wanted it to be if people werent assholes and old industries would be willing to change instead of clinging to their power. good for them, bad for us all. other technologies like fusion or gas or hydrogen may be good for particular industries or niches, but in a global context, reneweables are where its at. unfortunately, europe will not decide that, but rather countries like china and india (and the us, south america and russia by extension, but mainly the big global players).
a huge part of the greenhouse gases were released in the last 20-30 years. had they put in the effort, money and research during the 70s and 80s into consciously moving away from fossil fuels we'd be in a far better condition today. even back then there were technologies that were clearly better than burning coal and fossil gas.
Anyone remember the oil fields on fire in Koweït?
Btw, the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex anybody?
Thank you CIA / Pentagon for Northstream wrecking.
@@Luemm3l You must be smoking crack. Europe is in an energy crisis exactly because there out their faith in unreliable solar and wind. Mass poverty and deindustrialization will happen if the world goes down the path of Europe.
Yeah we definitely had the technologies to begin making policies with teeth back in the 80s. And with proper funding those technologies would have only become more efficient, as well as refining newer technologies. Expanding nuclear to mitigate or even halt coal produced electricity is a no brainer. Wind and solar are still vastly underused (HOAs even limit private citizens from effectively using solar on their own homes). There was much we can have done back then, and far more that we can do now. But we won’t. Not until something true my disastrous happens, which will probably be in about a decade or so, and by then it’ll be a bit late in the game.
This and the previous video on the history of man-made climate change is some of the best summarised educational videos explaining what we know, what we knew, and why we are in the situation we are now. Truly impressed!
Simon makes great videos. But still not a word about the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex... Big Brother (algorithms) is watching you tube...
The entire religion of global warming or climate change-And on any view it is religion because based on belief or passive unquestioning acceptance, is based upon one fundamental misapprehension which, if you remove it, causes the entire theory or religion to collapse, and the fundamental misapprehension is that there either is or can be, any such thing as a Global temperature.
It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth.
A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate.
Planet Earth doesn’t have ‘a temperature’, one figure that says it all. There are oceans, landmasses, ice, the atmosphere, day and night, and seasons. Also, the temperature of Earth never gets to equilibrium: just as it’s starting to warm up on the sunny-side, the sun gets ‘turned off’; and just as it’s starting to cool down on the night-side, the sun gets ‘turned on’. The ‘temperature of Earth’ is therefore as much of a contrived statistic as the GDP of a country. (If the Earth was in equilibrium, that is, if it absorbed and re-emitted the Sun’s radiation perfectly, as a ‘blackbody’, then its rotation would be irrelevant, and the temperature would be a constant 6 ⁰C. Mocking up the effects of Earth’s albedo brings the ‘blackbody’ temperature down to -18 ⁰C, and including greenhouse warming brings it back up to around 15 ⁰C.)
‘The climate’ is difficult to define: is it a trend over one decade, century, or millennium? For what sized region is it defined ? Weather is very variable - how can we go from weather to climate? Furthermore, climate change on human timescales is a very small effect, and the empirical data needed for climate models have large ‘error’ bars.
If you cannot define what is changing, you cannot say it is changing; it is essential to understand that no man apprehend or experience the entire plant -the whole-thing all-at-once. You cannot even sense apprehend experience yourself - he-whole-thing, all-at-once, so how could you possibly experience something as relatively gigantic as the planet on which you live, other than piecemeal and seriatim - little bit after little bit.
If you remove the fallacy that there either is or can be, any such thing as a “Global Temperature” , the entire edifice of climate change and/or global warming, collapses, because it is contingent on the idea that there can be , or is, a “ Global Temperature, which is a thermodynamic and mathematical
impossibility. While it is possible to treat temperature statistically locally, it is meaningless to talk about a global temperature for Earth. The Globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless. Or talking about economics, it does make sense to compare the currency exchange rate of two countries, whereas there is no point in talking about an average 'global exchange rate'.
If temperature decreases at one point and it increases at another, the average will remain the same as before, but it will give rise to an entirely different thermodynamics and thus a different climate. If, for example, it is 10 degrees at one point and 40 degrees at another, the average is 25 degrees. But if instead there is 25 degrees both places, the average is still 25 degrees. These two cases would give rise to two entirely different types of climate, because in the former case one would have pressure differences and strong winds, while in the latter there would be no wind.
The entire religion of global warming or climate change is based upon one fundamental misapprehension which, if you remove it, causes the entire theory or religion to collapse, and the fundamental misapprehension is that there either is or can be, any such thing as a Global temperature.
It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth.
A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate.
Planet Earth doesn’t have ‘a temperature’, one figure that says it all. There are oceans, landmasses, ice, the atmosphere, day and night, and seasons. Also, the temperature of Earth never gets to equilibrium: just as it’s starting to warm up on the sunny-side, the sun gets ‘turned off’; and just as it’s starting to cool down on the night-side, the sun gets ‘turned on’. The ‘temperature of Earth’ is therefore as much of a contrived statistic as the GDP of a country. (If the Earth was in equilibrium, that is, if it absorbed and re-emitted the Sun’s radiation perfectly, as a ‘blackbody’, then its rotation would be irrelevant, and the temperature would be a constant 6 ⁰C. Mocking up the effects of Earth’s albedo brings the ‘blackbody’ temperature down to -18 ⁰C, and including greenhouse warming brings it back up to around 15 ⁰C.)
‘The climate’ is difficult to define: is it a trend over one decade, century, or millennium? For what sized region is it defined ? Weather is very variable - how can we go from weather to climate? Furthermore, climate change on human timescales is a very small effect, and the empirical data needed for climate models have large ‘error’ bars.
If you cannot define what is changing, you cannot say it is changing; It is essential to understand that no man apprehend or experience the entire plant -the whole-thing all-at-once. You cannot even sense apprehend experience yourself - he-whole-thing, all-at-once, so how could you possibly experience something as gigantic as the planet on which you live, other than piecemeal and seriatim - little bit after little bit.
If you remove the fallacy that there either is or can be, any such thing as a “Global Temperature” , the entire edifice of climate change and/or global warming, collapses, because it is contingent on the idea that there can be , or is, a “ Global Temperature, which is a thermodynamic and mathematical
impossibility. While it is possible to treat temperature statistically locally, it is meaningless to talk about a global temperature for Earth. The Globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless. Or talking about economics, it does make sense to compare the currency exchange rate of two countries, whereas there is no point in talking about an average 'global exchange rate'.
If temperature decreases at one point and it increases at another, the average will remain the same as before, but it will give rise to an entirely different thermodynamics and thus a different climate. If, for example, it is 10 degrees at one point and 40 degrees at another, the average is 25 degrees. But if instead there is 25 degrees both places, the average is still 25 degrees. These two cases would give rise to two entirely different types of climate, because in the former case one would have pressure differences and strong winds, while in the latter there would be no wind.
This is a great summary of the political history that brought us to the mess we're facing, now. I've been watching this develop in the newspapers all my adult life. I would like to see a summary of how this campaign of orchestrated confusion continued beyond 1990 (it is still going on to this day).
Too bad censorship won't allow to mention the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex...
I'm tired of the belief in climate change vs non-belief in climate change dichotomy being referred to as a left-wing/right-wing issue, as if they were two equally valid sides of the same coin. Let's just call it what it is, being pro-science vs being anti-science.
This is a brilliant title "The decade we LOST EARTH". accurate and sarcastic at the same time.
love the bobby broccoli influence!
I'm not sure with hindsight we can suggest anyone believed capitalism was "the best way to improve people's lives", it was just the best way for corporations to make the most money at the expense of people's wellbeing.
It ought not to come as too much of a surprise that economists of the ‘80s dismissed climate change. After all, their economic models treated the natural world as an externality. Despite the Stern report and subsequent economic analyses concluding otherwise, our leaders continue to worship at the alter of neoliberalism and, contrary to all the evidence, believe that technology will save the day.
I’m reminded of the words of C. P. Snow in his 1959 Rede Lecture on the Two Cultures - “A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: 'Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?'”
In 1990, the UN Environment Program declared the nineties would be the decade of decision on the environment. Well, we decided.
This is nonsense. The climate movement and NGOs have utterly failed. Join Just Stop Oil or one of the other civil resistance movements and force the changes.
All these terrible results were funded by the oil industry. I'd say the fight was lost centuries earlier with the US government allowing corrupt oligarchs to make rail transportation exorbitantly expensive while inventors were designing the first automobiles which gave the citizenry their alternative and ultimately enabled massive urban sprawl and the need for the automobile to travel in the US. The oil industry would still exist for synthetic goods manufacturing but be nowhere near as powerful or influential if transportation didn't require them.
I like having the ability to drive whenever I see fit without having to rely on the bus or train time availability, I can just get in my car and go to wherever I want without having to waste my time on the bus or train
Great video 🙏🏼 geoscientist here, I'm currently studying ice core records throughout the Holocene for a homework. Do you have an explanation why the temperature signal (d18O Stack) nearly always changes before the CO2 signal ? Doesn't that somehow question the causality between CO2 and temperature?
This doesn't change our responsibility for modern climate change of course.
Very good question, and the answer is predictably a little more complex than a simple relationship. Skeptical Science has an excellent article on the subject (great resource for questions like this) skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
@@SimonClark awesome, thanks a lot 🙏🏼
@@SimonClark so basically: the initial temperature signal comes from orbital parameter changes, triggers a positive feedback with CO2 and therefore continues to warm/cool until the next orbital parameter changes. This both explains the CO2 effecting atmospheric temperature (greenhouse) and the CO2 signal lagging behind the temperature change, right ? 😁
@@xxdr34m5xx_4 bang on, yes
@@SimonClark Only problem is that CO2 rise lags Temp rise by several centuries. Which is problematic for AGW theory....
We didn't lose earth. We lost our housing permit for earth. Earth is gonna be fine. We're not.
"We" being *You* and which identifiable immediate interlocutor that you are addressing?
@@vhawk1951kl most definitely homo sapiens, but considering that reply I'm not sure if I want to include you in that. Not particularly... sapient...
@@Argosh Clearly that is your best and only shot which explains much, particularly how religion makes fools of men(human beings)
@@vhawk1951kl it's funny, because you're the religidiot...
@@vhawk1951kl Why are you such a worthless troll?
Well this video title sounds entirely too depressing for a Friday morning, think I'll come back to it later haha
We already know the ending, so not too depressing.
I know the feeling. But do make a reminder for yourself to come back
A situation happened yesterday that made me realize how humanity got to this perilous place. We live near the ocean in FL…..
The county just sent everyone letters telling homeowners they will give us grants to put our homes on stilts to prevent future flooding.
Without even thinking, my parents (Boomers) thought this was great.
I on the other hand being a realist said… 🤔 “Mom, so you’re going to row yourself back and forth in a boat to get groceries in the coming years while your house sits in the water?”
Her response…. “Oh Who cares, I’ll be dead by then anyways.”
The lesson here is: People can’t think rationally beyond immediate needs therefore care less about what happens in a future that they can’t see themselves part of.
That’s how humanity behaved in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and fast forward 50 years till now regarding climate change.
It’s highly doubtful the human race is capable of changing this mindset to the scale required to reverse the damage we’ve done in time.
And the irony of his skiing photo behind Sununu and the fact HE's a major reason global warming wasn't tackled when the US needed to act. That's likely the closest thing to an actual villain incarnate you'll encounter.
God, Nierenberg and Sununu really screwed us and the planet didn't they
The carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex Peter?
They were just typical GOP pricks. Even if they didn't exist, once Ronnie Raygun was sElected, the only question was how fast the shit was going to hit the fan.
@@lorenzoblum868 Please stop spamming. The military industrial complex is a large issue, but climate change is related to all industries, not only the military one.
Don't blaspheme.
@@موسى_7 There's no such thing as God.
Sununu and all the free market absolutists must really hate their grandkids, who will bear all the brunt of what they messed up.
the wealthy will always be better of the masses
Leaded gasoline!
I love that the map of the netherlands already assumes we will claim all of the inland waters like the ijselmeer and the waters in zeeland. And can't believe that we knew about global warming and still are unable to reach effective political action.
The entire religion of global warming or climate change is based upon one fundamental misapprehension which, if you remove it, causes the entire theory or religion to collapse, and the fundamental misapprehension is that there either is or can be, any such thing as a Global temperature.
It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth.
A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate.
Planet Earth doesn’t have ‘a temperature’, one figure that says it all. There are oceans, landmasses, ice, the atmosphere, day and night, and seasons. Also, the temperature of Earth never gets to equilibrium: just as it’s starting to warm up on the sunny-side, the sun gets ‘turned off’; and just as it’s starting to cool down on the night-side, the sun gets ‘turned on’. The ‘temperature of Earth’ is therefore as much of a contrived statistic as the GDP of a country. (If the Earth was in equilibrium, that is, if it absorbed and re-emitted the Sun’s radiation perfectly, as a ‘blackbody’, then its rotation would be irrelevant, and the temperature would be a constant 6 ⁰C. Mocking up the effects of Earth’s albedo brings the ‘blackbody’ temperature down to -18 ⁰C, and including greenhouse warming brings it back up to around 15 ⁰C.)
‘The climate’ is difficult to define: is it a trend over one decade, century, or millennium? For what sized region is it defined ? Weather is very variable - how can we go from weather to climate? Furthermore, climate change on human timescales is a very small effect, and the empirical data needed for climate models have large ‘error’ bars.
If you cannot define what is changing, you cannot say it is changing; It is essential to understand that no man apprehend or experience the entire plant -the whole-thing all-at-once. You cannot even sense apprehend experience yourself - he-whole-thing, all-at-once, so how could you possibly experience something as gigantic as the planet on which you live, other than piecemeal and seriatim - little bit after little bit.
If you remove the fallacy that there either is or can be, any such thing as a “Global Temperature” , the entire edifice of climate change and/or global warming, collapses, because it is contingent on the idea that there can be , or is, a “ Global Temperature, which is a thermodynamic and mathematical
impossibility. While it is possible to treat temperature statistically locally, it is meaningless to talk about a global temperature for Earth. The Globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless. Or talking about economics, it does make sense to compare the currency exchange rate of two countries, whereas there is no point in talking about an average 'global exchange rate'.
If temperature decreases at one point and it increases at another, the average will remain the same as before, but it will give rise to an entirely different thermodynamics and thus a different climate. If, for example, it is 10 degrees at one point and 40 degrees at another, the average is 25 degrees. But if instead there is 25 degrees both places, the average is still 25 degrees. These two cases would give rise to two entirely different types of climate, because in the former case one would have pressure differences and strong winds, while in the latter there would be no wind.
You wil get bored with your religion toy soonenough or another one will become fashionable and off after that, you and the rest of the flock will go.
This is a fantastic summary, you've done such a good job to explain such a dense history well in a short documentary. Great work!
so the burning question: why are we not hearing more about Hansen's fee and *dividend* system? This excellent history left out the dividend part and how that bit makes pricing carbon honestly socially responsible - equitable.
The shark was not the villain, just a natural causality, the mayor did nothing to prevent the damage... he is the villain.
spot on ! i can remember growing up in the 60s, 70s, and discussing all this at university in the 1980s. really sad misguided political agendas are screwing our future. keep up the great work!
The crazy thing is even today the war on sustainable technology and the green scare are still going.
And even today we can’t agree and start fixing this shit.
It's becoming a convergent consensus now, everyone will agree the only choice is to remove excessive CO2 from the atmosphere (except for the ones that lie that excessive CO2 is going to help the plants).
It wasn't just political failure but big business lobbying
The video definitely highlights science vs politics and business
Scientists warn us about how humans are turning Earth into a hot house not seen in millions of years and politicians and businessman try to push doubt and misinformation to protect corporate profits.
It was not so much that they were protecting corporate profits as they had an Anti-science, anti-sustainability agenda. Research and development of technologies that have a lot of potential that are currently in their infancy is a profitable thing to do.
Nirenberg was a Scientist aswell.
This kinda shit makes my blood boil. Good job making this story accessible for people
Simon, I really like your videos. Very strong writing, solid production quality (especially this one!) and you have a great, engaging voice. Please keep up the good work, I do hope you get more views going forward.
Loved the way you explained this - the use of timeline graphics really helped tell the story
We're still missing the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex...
@@lorenzoblum868 i don’t think that really enters into it. If the USSR and USA could agree on the whole in the ozone layer, i don’t see how the MIC impacts this at all.
@@lorenzoblum868 It needs to be decarbonised.
We had fully developed energy equipment that relied on sunlight, the winds, river and ocean currents and temperature differentials when Reagan took office. He stopped them from being deployed in the US. Full stop. The delay Reagan caused in deploying our own American-invented technologies was enough to allow global warming to get out of control. This was such a frustrating time to be in the renewable energy business. Markets that had seemed so promising simply vanished. So these wonderful technologies went onto the shelf for over 30 years. A few brave souls went ahead with producing their own electricity with the then-available photovoltaics panels. But without governmental support, nothing much happened.
Simon, could you please talk about ethanol subsidies, it's making things worse, we lose a huge chunk of our potential carbon sink because of this policy for very little output for the energy we put in.
Yet more idiocy brought to us by credulous, low information environmentalists.
"We have met the enemy and they is us." - Pogo. The American Way of Life (AWOL) is not sustainable. We blew it when we ignored Carter's (meek) warnings.
i call what he was doing climate whispering. i wasn't able to vote yet, but i really appreciated his energy talks. raygun's election totally traumatized me.
This is what my mom ment with, that there was a time in her youth, where everything seemed to move into the right direction. The fall of the soviet union, the alleged victory of democracy and humand rights, the alliviation of acid rain and the ozone problem and the open discourse on climate change. Than came Bush, 911, ...
Yeah… we had a good run. But we‘ve lost. Let‘s hope civilization survives.
Nordhaus later won a Nobel for his atrocious work on the economics of climate change, basically the Kissinger winning the Peace Prize equivalent for economics. Well there was also Bernanke last year.
Amazing work. Good to put name and faces to the responsables for not taking action back in the 70s and 80s. Human history will remember this people and the lack of accountability of the developed nations, fosil fuel industry and the US government.
Come on algorithm, boost this magnificent piece of work!
We've got the BobbyBroccoli format! It's got to go big now!
"Sorry you got twisted up in this scene.
From where you're kneeling it must seem like an 18-carat run of bad luck.
Truth is... the game was rigged from the start."
Been learning about climate change on my own for the past 5 odd years. This is the most comprehensive documentary on climate change history I've ever seen. Thanks a lot, mate!
Almost 50 years were we humans could have made the climate better. Thanks for yet another great video.
Arrhenius Equation, 1889.
Btw, the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex?
A very good video that features the prophet michael mann ruclips.net/video/yOhpLVFbAGk/видео.html
The entire religion of global warming or climate change-And on any view it is religion because based on belief or passive unquestioning acceptance, is based upon one fundamental misapprehension which, if you remove it, causes the entire theory or religion to collapse, and the fundamental misapprehension is that there either is or can be, any such thing as a Global temperature.
It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth.
A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate.
Planet Earth doesn’t have ‘a temperature’, one figure that says it all. There are oceans, landmasses, ice, the atmosphere, day and night, and seasons. Also, the temperature of Earth never gets to equilibrium: just as it’s starting to warm up on the sunny-side, the sun gets ‘turned off’; and just as it’s starting to cool down on the night-side, the sun gets ‘turned on’. The ‘temperature of Earth’ is therefore as much of a contrived statistic as the GDP of a country. (If the Earth was in equilibrium, that is, if it absorbed and re-emitted the Sun’s radiation perfectly, as a ‘blackbody’, then its rotation would be irrelevant, and the temperature would be a constant 6 ⁰C. Mocking up the effects of Earth’s albedo brings the ‘blackbody’ temperature down to -18 ⁰C, and including greenhouse warming brings it back up to around 15 ⁰C.)
‘The climate’ is difficult to define: is it a trend over one decade, century, or millennium? For what sized region is it defined ? Weather is very variable - how can we go from weather to climate? Furthermore, climate change on human timescales is a very small effect, and the empirical data needed for climate models have large ‘error’ bars.
If you cannot define what is changing, you cannot say it is changing; it is essential to understand that no man apprehend or experience the entire plant -the whole-thing all-at-once. You cannot even sense apprehend experience yourself - he-whole-thing, all-at-once, so how could you possibly experience something as relatively gigantic as the planet on which you live, other than piecemeal and seriatim - little bit after little bit.
If you remove the fallacy that there either is or can be, any such thing as a “Global Temperature” , the entire edifice of climate change and/or global warming, collapses, because it is contingent on the idea that there can be , or is, a “ Global Temperature, which is a thermodynamic and mathematical
impossibility. While it is possible to treat temperature statistically locally, it is meaningless to talk about a global temperature for Earth. The Globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless. Or talking about economics, it does make sense to compare the currency exchange rate of two countries, whereas there is no point in talking about an average 'global exchange rate'.
If temperature decreases at one point and it increases at another, the average will remain the same as before, but it will give rise to an entirely different thermodynamics and thus a different climate. If, for example, it is 10 degrees at one point and 40 degrees at another, the average is 25 degrees. But if instead there is 25 degrees both places, the average is still 25 degrees. These two cases would give rise to two entirely different types of climate, because in the former case one would have pressure differences and strong winds, while in the latter there would be no wind.
50 years ago Klaus Schwab formed the World Economic Forum. The main focus of the world economic forum is climate change.
Klaus is the main student of a liberation theology catholic archbishop Helder Camara. His other main student was pope francis.
Liberation theology is marxist catholicism. Camara worked with Marcuse and Friere to push global communisim. All of this "climate crisis" cultisim is an extention of that.
@@nayrtnartsipacify Hmm, no doubt, religious fanatics ever were meddlesome trouble makers and stupefiers of the witles and degenerate.
Nothing was ever unproved by religious ,mumbo jumbo and monkey business.
Love the non-linear callout
We shouldn't forget that people like Nuremberg, Sununu and in fact all liberaldemocratic governments didn't act out of stupidity or ignorance. They acted out of interest, economic and financial interest. There were people behind Nuremberg, capitalists.
There is so much in here that I knew nothing about. Thanks so much for making this Simon, genuinely eye opening
The entire religion of global warming or climate change-And on any view it is religion because based on belief or passive unquestioning acceptance, is based upon one fundamental misapprehension which, if you remove it, causes the entire theory or religion to collapse, and the fundamental misapprehension is that there either is or can be, any such thing as a Global temperature.
It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth.
A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate.
Planet Earth doesn’t have ‘a temperature’, one figure that says it all. There are oceans, landmasses, ice, the atmosphere, day and night, and seasons. Also, the temperature of Earth never gets to equilibrium: just as it’s starting to warm up on the sunny-side, the sun gets ‘turned off’; and just as it’s starting to cool down on the night-side, the sun gets ‘turned on’. The ‘temperature of Earth’ is therefore as much of a contrived statistic as the GDP of a country. (If the Earth was in equilibrium, that is, if it absorbed and re-emitted the Sun’s radiation perfectly, as a ‘blackbody’, then its rotation would be irrelevant, and the temperature would be a constant 6 ⁰C. Mocking up the effects of Earth’s albedo brings the ‘blackbody’ temperature down to -18 ⁰C, and including greenhouse warming brings it back up to around 15 ⁰C.)
‘The climate’ is difficult to define: is it a trend over one decade, century, or millennium? For what sized region is it defined ? Weather is very variable - how can we go from weather to climate? Furthermore, climate change on human timescales is a very small effect, and the empirical data needed for climate models have large ‘error’ bars.
If you cannot define what is changing, you cannot say it is changing; it is essential to understand that no man apprehend or experience the entire plant -the whole-thing all-at-once. You cannot even sense apprehend experience yourself - he-whole-thing, all-at-once, so how could you possibly experience something as relatively gigantic as the planet on which you live, other than piecemeal and seriatim - little bit after little bit.
If you remove the fallacy that there either is or can be, any such thing as a “Global Temperature” , the entire edifice of climate change and/or global warming, collapses, because it is contingent on the idea that there can be , or is, a “ Global Temperature, which is a thermodynamic and mathematical
impossibility. While it is possible to treat temperature statistically locally, it is meaningless to talk about a global temperature for Earth. The Globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless. Or talking about economics, it does make sense to compare the currency exchange rate of two countries, whereas there is no point in talking about an average 'global exchange rate'.
If temperature decreases at one point and it increases at another, the average will remain the same as before, but it will give rise to an entirely different thermodynamics and thus a different climate. If, for example, it is 10 degrees at one point and 40 degrees at another, the average is 25 degrees. But if instead there is 25 degrees both places, the average is still 25 degrees. These two cases would give rise to two entirely different types of climate, because in the former case one would have pressure differences and strong winds, while in the latter there would be no wind.
I remember writing and calling my elected officials so many times during that period, and protesting at every opportunity, and it was like I and the few by my side didn't even exist. It still makes me so incredibly angry! My sons will have to live with the consequences of what MY generation was unable to stop, and that breaks - shatters - my spirit. 😢 I'm almost thankful I have to grandchildren as of yet, in fact. 🥺
The entire religion of global warming or climate change-And on any view it is religion because based on belief or passive unquestioning acceptance, is based upon one fundamental misapprehension which, if you remove it, causes the entire theory or religion to collapse, and the fundamental misapprehension is that there either is or can be, any such thing as a Global temperature.
It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth.
A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate.
Planet Earth doesn’t have ‘a temperature’, one figure that says it all. There are oceans, landmasses, ice, the atmosphere, day and night, and seasons. Also, the temperature of Earth never gets to equilibrium: just as it’s starting to warm up on the sunny-side, the sun gets ‘turned off’; and just as it’s starting to cool down on the night-side, the sun gets ‘turned on’. The ‘temperature of Earth’ is therefore as much of a contrived statistic as the GDP of a country. (If the Earth was in equilibrium, that is, if it absorbed and re-emitted the Sun’s radiation perfectly, as a ‘blackbody’, then its rotation would be irrelevant, and the temperature would be a constant 6 ⁰C. Mocking up the effects of Earth’s albedo brings the ‘blackbody’ temperature down to -18 ⁰C, and including greenhouse warming brings it back up to around 15 ⁰C.)
‘The climate’ is difficult to define: is it a trend over one decade, century, or millennium? For what sized region is it defined ? Weather is very variable - how can we go from weather to climate? Furthermore, climate change on human timescales is a very small effect, and the empirical data needed for climate models have large ‘error’ bars.
If you cannot define what is changing, you cannot say it is changing; it is essential to understand that no man apprehend or experience the entire plant -the whole-thing all-at-once. You cannot even sense apprehend experience yourself - he-whole-thing, all-at-once, so how could you possibly experience something as relatively gigantic as the planet on which you live, other than piecemeal and seriatim - little bit after little bit.
If you remove the fallacy that there either is or can be, any such thing as a “Global Temperature” , the entire edifice of climate change and/or global warming, collapses, because it is contingent on the idea that there can be , or is, a “ Global Temperature, which is a thermodynamic and mathematical
impossibility. While it is possible to treat temperature statistically locally, it is meaningless to talk about a global temperature for Earth. The Globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless. Or talking about economics, it does make sense to compare the currency exchange rate of two countries, whereas there is no point in talking about an average 'global exchange rate'.
If temperature decreases at one point and it increases at another, the average will remain the same as before, but it will give rise to an entirely different thermodynamics and thus a different climate. If, for example, it is 10 degrees at one point and 40 degrees at another, the average is 25 degrees. But if instead there is 25 degrees both places, the average is still 25 degrees. These two cases would give rise to two entirely different types of climate, because in the former case one would have pressure differences and strong winds, while in the latter there would be no wind.
Venus is interesting, and I'm sceptical. Temp on Venus is 400°C with 98% CO² @ 92bar or 92x the pressure of the Earths atmosphere. Considering that the IR radiation is twice (1/0.7²) as intense on Venus also (because Venus is much closer to the Sun) CO² on Venus acts quite differently than it does on Earth. Considering temperature of a gas is directly proportional to its pressure, then Venus is 92x warmer due to the pressure created by IR trapped by the atmosphere (of almost pure CO²). For comparison, if we calculate the pressure @ 1 bar (like CO² is on Earth), then the temperature of Venus would be 400/92=4.34°c, which is @ 2x the IR exposure. So with this very rough estimate of just how much 98% CO² @ 1bar would warm the planet Venus, the answer is about 2.1°C. Venus has only trace amounts of H²O, which is probably why 98% CO² is having such a weak effect on the temperature of Venus, either that, or consider the fact that CO² has hardly any effect on temperature at all. Even Eunice Foote in 1857 proved that 100% CO² @ 120° only had about a 20% higher temperature than 'common air' at 100°. I ask then, what would 0.02% CO² do to the actual temperature compared to say 0.04%? That's a relative doubling of the CO² level, but it doesn't result in doubling of the temperature. The actual increase is still just 0.02%, and the linear effect on temperature is minimal to say the least according to Eunice Foote.
The 1°C rise in global temperature on Earth since 1850, irregardless of the error margins in the data (which increasingly quickly become more precise since 1850), is more than likely caused either by the error margins, by H²O or the Sun, rather than it is created by the 0.02% rise in CO² in the Earths atmosphere since 1850. If CO² , the same gas on both planets, is having logically the same effect on Earth as it is on Venus, then we might consider the effect of just how 98% CO² on Venus can be compared to the 0.04% CO² on Earth. In this scenario CO² would be almost impossible to trace in the global temperature measurement of Venus, as 0.04% of 2.1° is practically nothing. The effect is as hard to trace in the Earths atmosphere (the reason why CO² is a trace gas). At least, the derived warming effect of 0.02% extra CO² certainly disappears in the substantial errors margins that have been historically present whilst measuring global world temperature trends since 1850. It is known that the error margins of early mercury thermometers, and the methods for air temperature collection (bucket measurements at sea) have given such a collectively large error margin early on, that even a 1° rise in global temperatures is easily lost in the error margins in the data. In any case, it is very hard to pin it all on a 0.02% rise in CO² over 100 years.
It is also true to say that the meter or granularity of historical measurements of global temperature before the invention of the thermometer is far greater than 100 years. The meter of temperature measurements is more like a 1000 years depending on how far you go back. 500.000.000 years is 5 million thousand year data points, and we have no idea if the temperature has moved up and down within these 1000 year data points by any degree. It could be that the temperature averages out at some value over a thousand years, but it does not precisely tell us if historically the actual temperature varied by + or - any amount over shorter periods. Even if accurate, +1° over 100 years is well within the range of global temperatures that have been calculated in the past within the meter of a thousand years, and if the temperature goes down at some point within the next 900 years, the global average might not look so scary and be perfectly on track.
Babe wake up, it's time to watch capitalogenic climate change lore, the prologue to the largest mass extinction since the end-Permian :)
(Seriously though, thank you for this, Simon).
You need 5000 to 10000 ppm or even 30000 ppm (the Higherst estimative of carbon dioxide on Permian) to reach such disaster. The global temperatures was around 32°C.
@@vascomanteigas9433 you're not considering how much faster todays mass extinction is occurring than the end permian.
If the question is "where did the United States go wrong," then the answer is usually "Ronald Reagan"
I've already seen the video on nebula and just wanted to say thank you for it!
I was born in 1996 and for my entire life I've been listening to adults talking and discussing global warming and climate change.
It breaks my heart to know that I became an adult only now when is too late for my vote to change something.
Everyone was born to late for that the system puts who they want in there
You don't know it's too late. Keep voting and stay politically active
12:40 The idea that global agricultural productivity could decline by a third and it basically wouldn't make a difference seems like the kind of thing only an economist could believe
GDP has no bearing on regular people but it represents how much money the owning class is making so that's why it's able to go up even as the US de-industrializes. Non productive industries like finance and services inflate the GDP despite producing little to nothing for the average person.
When is the decline supposed to happen or is it still a prediction .
We do know that co2 increase has boosted it by 6 %.
@@andrewtrip8617
Go bother somebody else, I don't care what evidence you think you have. Join the IPCC if you're such an expert
@@oliverwilson11 it's nasa data .born out by agricultural production records .You can take it or leave it Depending on how much of an alarmist you are .
Yes! I love the continued experiment with the Bobby broccoli style of editing, even if it's only once in a while
Today photovoltaics of the cheapest form of energy closely followed by wind. Just imagine how much better they would be if countries with a well educated population took research and development of these technologies seriously 50 years ago.
@@alwynwatson6119 there is no "clean" energy. There is greed, hence corruption...
Btw, the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex anybody?
Excellent video as always Simon, I really enjoyed this one and the production quality is exceptional!
If you want to know climate deniers motivation, follow the money... Btw, the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex?
It's popular in some circles to blame all the world's problems on the Boomers. I'd just like to point out that none of the bad guys in this tale were Boomers. They were members of the "Greatest Generation".
a lot of the people who are continuing the policy of doubt and reluctance to regulate in the modern day are boomers tho
im so happy you made these. i've been waiting for bobbybroccoli to make a video about my concentration, as a meteorologist/climatologist. amazing stuff, and great work piecing together so much!!!
Really good graphics moving back and fourth on a timeline to understand when stuff happened and with great pictures to characterize it 👏👏
Back then, it would have actually made sense to switch from coal to large scale nuclear power. There was enough time for the long construction times and embodied emissions of construction to be offset by the low carbon power the reactors would produce. Now its too late to do this, as we would blow our remaining carbon budget we need to keep below 2 degrees before we could build the generators.
As a born and raised cape codder, you’ve committed one of the cardinal sins: it’s ON cape cod, not IN cape cod!
The folks at WHOI are fantastic, loved going there in field trips
Bobby Broccoli is an objectively great name by the way
There is a glaring error of fact in this video, and that is the idea that we require advanced technological means to "decarbonize" our economy, means that the author claims, "were still in their infancy" in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Nothing could be further from the truth. In actual fact, "more and better" technology cannot rescue us from the consequences of mismanaging the technologies which caused this problem in the first place, and the solutions we needs are not technological in nature, at all. The real problem is a political problem, stemming from our relationship to Nature, not some sort of lack of the right technology.
It is land policy-globally, not just in the US and other technologically advanced, highly consumptive countries-that is the root of the problem. The two largest factors in consumption are transportation and HVAC, and by changing how we use vehicles, buildings, and land, we could dramatically reduce our waste of natural resources to a level of consumption which is sustainable. This is not a problem that can be solved by solar panels and lithium-ion batteries. It is a problem that can only be solved by conservation, which can only plausibly be achieved by eliminating sprawl, to obviate the need to substitute the egregiously lavish consumption of energy resources for wiser choices.
"Supply side environmentalism"-the idea that we can continue our wasteful lifestyles and "technology" will somehow produce "clean energy"-is a pipe dream that is killing us all. We must address demand, first and foremost.
"error of fact"
And you can support your claims with credible research?
Wonderful video. Between governments that don’t take action because of big corporations lobbying and a population hooked up on meat more than it has ever been, it sometimes feels like I’m mourning a dying planet. People don’t want to take action because “The end of the world has been anounced many times and “nothing happened”, why would this one be any different?”. It’s so hard being optimistic some days.
meat has nothing to do with anything. if it wasn't for animal protein and fat humans would not have evolved to be what they are.
Well there's been several "lost" years. But by the time leading up to the Kyoto protocol, lots of officials were fully aware of what was going to happen, that's the period where we went fully off course. So the mid-90's to 2005: certainly if it had been taken seriously and been worked on steadily since then, we would be much further along, and have more time going forward till tipping points are reached.
It doesn’t help that so many of the loudest environmentalists seem to think the only solutions are totalitarian communism.
I got my degree in electronic engineering technology, not meteorology, but I had a lot of credit hours studying the propagation of EM waves through different media. The classroom and lab work showed exactly how global warming wa described decades before I heard of global warming. The science is not new, and is proven, we just didn't know the consequences and extent.
You can't forecast the behaviour of a chaotic, non linear system 100 years into the future.
You would have done a little bit of fluid dynamics in your early years?
The entire religion of global warming or climate change-And on any view it is religion because based on belief or passive unquestioning acceptance, is based upon one fundamental misapprehension which, if you remove it, causes the entire theory or religion to collapse, and the fundamental misapprehension is that there either is or can be, any such thing as a Global temperature.
It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth.
A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate.
Planet Earth doesn’t have ‘a temperature’, one figure that says it all. There are oceans, landmasses, ice, the atmosphere, day and night, and seasons. Also, the temperature of Earth never gets to equilibrium: just as it’s starting to warm up on the sunny-side, the sun gets ‘turned off’; and just as it’s starting to cool down on the night-side, the sun gets ‘turned on’. The ‘temperature of Earth’ is therefore as much of a contrived statistic as the GDP of a country. (If the Earth was in equilibrium, that is, if it absorbed and re-emitted the Sun’s radiation perfectly, as a ‘blackbody’, then its rotation would be irrelevant, and the temperature would be a constant 6 ⁰C. Mocking up the effects of Earth’s albedo brings the ‘blackbody’ temperature down to -18 ⁰C, and including greenhouse warming brings it back up to around 15 ⁰C.)
‘The climate’ is difficult to define: is it a trend over one decade, century, or millennium? For what sized region is it defined ? Weather is very variable - how can we go from weather to climate? Furthermore, climate change on human timescales is a very small effect, and the empirical data needed for climate models have large ‘error’ bars.
If you cannot define what is changing, you cannot say it is changing; it is essential to understand that no man apprehend or experience the entire plant -the whole-thing all-at-once. You cannot even sense apprehend experience yourself - he-whole-thing, all-at-once, so how could you possibly experience something as relatively gigantic as the planet on which you live, other than piecemeal and seriatim - little bit after little bit.
If you remove the fallacy that there either is or can be, any such thing as a “Global Temperature” , the entire edifice of climate change and/or global warming, collapses, because it is contingent on the idea that there can be , or is, a “ Global Temperature, which is a thermodynamic and mathematical
impossibility. While it is possible to treat temperature statistically locally, it is meaningless to talk about a global temperature for Earth. The Globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless. Or talking about economics, it does make sense to compare the currency exchange rate of two countries, whereas there is no point in talking about an average 'global exchange rate'.
If temperature decreases at one point and it increases at another, the average will remain the same as before, but it will give rise to an entirely different thermodynamics and thus a different climate. If, for example, it is 10 degrees at one point and 40 degrees at another, the average is 25 degrees. But if instead there is 25 degrees both places, the average is still 25 degrees. These two cases would give rise to two entirely different types of climate, because in the former case one would have pressure differences and strong winds, while in the latter there would be no wind.
Jeff Benzos just bought a yacht for half a billion dollars. There. Now I feel less helpless about the catastrophe I have seen the world heading towards.
I just watched this video on Nebula and came here specifically to say bravo. Strangely I got around 40 science channels I subscribed to but your videos never came across on my feed. Hmmm. Anyway I subbed here too.
It is painful to listen to the same exact arguments from 40-50 years ago than we are seeing / hearing today. "uncertainty" "bad models" "its the sun" "its natural outgassing"
Also frustrating because the ones telling us what is wrong and where we are heading are always adding the "there is still time" - which just makes it less urgent... i mean it delivers a false sense of security that "no need to panic, we can fix it... maybe tomorrow... by someone else... today... i will use my private jet again"
...
This is one of the most comprehensive and brilliant presentations on this topic I have seen. This has become one of my bookmarks, and I will be reviewing often. Thank you.
All you need to have a complete picture now is the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex...
Just because CEO's and politicians shave their mustaches, doesn't mean they aren't villains.
Shell oil company came out with video in the early 1990's explaining the damage CO2 run amok will do to the climate. It can be found on the internet. By the way I worked for shell oil co doing QC for fifteen years. Sorry, I didn't know in1979 when I started amount the damage of CO2.
Yeah, I worked for Chevron and we watched videos and had to pass a little test on Climate Change. The Refinery Manager gave his yearly business meeting with all of us. He said there was a “large human component to Climate Change “ . It fell on deaf ears. Sadly.
@@JoeMmt347 , sadly MY EARS were deaf at my own choice. I was more worried that I wouldn't get my favorite doughnut. I thought " oh we will cross that bridge when we get to it sadly not realizing wE were ALREADY WELL ONTO THE BRIDGE. Many Christians belive we can trash the planet cause jesus will come back and rapture them leaving the wrecked earth to the sinners. Most have no interest in simple science actually claiming science is the work of the devil. So twenty percent of the adult population simply refuse to even listen. We are in dire straits.
The Marshall Institute. 15 years ago I found out about them. I then also found out how successful their campaign of confusion was. Thanks for this great video.