My Favorite Climate Graph
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- čas přidán 12. 05. 2024
- Thanks to the folks at the Environmental Defense Fund for helping make the Marginal Abatement Cost Curve a thing that exists. You can read more about it here: www.edf.org/revamped-cost-cur...
And thanks to the folks at the center for negative carbon emissions at ASU: globalfutures.asu.edu/cnce/
There is much more to say about this graph...the big things being that it, of course, is guessing about the present and does not even attempt to predict the future. There are things that aren't even on the curve (like advanced geothermal) that I think are likely to be super important in our path to decarbonization because, right now, it's mostly unproven technology (though proven more and more every year.) Another thing it doesn't account for is energy costs going down, especially at certain times of the day (when there is lots of sun and wind) and that could substantially change the equation for Direct Air Capture of CO2.
Anyway! Thanks for reading the description...in exchange for that, because I know you're a real one, I was wondering if you could fill out this survey docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FA...
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"Sometimes I feel like if I'm personally not focusing on something, then its not getting done" ...that actually explains a lot
extremely April May coded
The irony of this coming from Hank is hilarious. Dude has his attention everywhere. So many personal projects and self-made companies that no one would be surprised if John wasn't his only brother, and "Hank" is actually twins playing the same role.
This is how I feel when I see some shows are still on the air long after I stop watching and thinking about them. I remember watching Survivor for a few years around when it first started and then stopped and didn't really think about it or see ads but something like 5 years later an ad comes up on tv, "Survivor is still a thing!? and it has how many seasons!?"
... and if you do focus on it, it looks like it's moving really slowly
(It's called ADHD.)
As someone who works in the field, I appreciate that you mentioned the time-dependency of the MAC curves. But please PLEASE keep in mind that the abatement costs depend on societal factors, such as political choices, too. If a country or a global sector decide to put a lot of R&D into a given technology, they can bring down the costs faster than if they weren't interested in it. MAC curves also depend on a huge amount of assumptions often derived from non-scientific studies (NGO papers with their own policy agendas and the like). So MAC curves can only be taken as a very rough and limited indication at best.
Also the time-dependency makes it quite complicated, as the researchers of the MAC curve have to make choices why certain technologies come first over others. And that choice, again, will influence the abatement costs of the other technologies. For example, if you first insulate your house very well, then installing a heat pump is extremely expensive for a low amount of remaining carbon saved. If you install a heat pump in a drafty, inefficient house, it performs much "better" in terms of abatement costs. Although it should be clear that insulation should come first, just as avoiding direct carbon emissions in a certain industrial plant should come before carbon capture and storage.
That insulation example helped illustrate it a lot better for me, thank you
Making, transporting, and installing insulation has a carbon cost. That is verboten. The only sustainable way to live with the lowest impact to the planet is to return to a agrarian (farming kills the planet) hunter gather lifestyle. Nature will maintain population levels through disease and starvation, and humans will be as on with Gaia. Everything else is just an exercise in hypocrisy and lies.
This is useful, thanks. Would the following example also count as a problem of the order of technologies - paying upfront cost to make products more reusable/recyclable vs making a product with minimal cost (not just for the materials but also the manufacturing cost) that can’t be reused or recycled as much. I imagine determining the proper order here is more complicated, depending on the specific industry/product
I think people need to realise that Co2 is not the issue, even if we stopped releasing Co2 ecology would still collapse because of chemical pollution and land clearance etc. plants and animals benefit from higher levels of Co2 and are perfectly capable of evolving or migrating in time to deal with climate change but they can't because we're physically destroying habitats much much faster than they are created.
I'll give you a great example of this:
I live in Sudbury, Ontario Canada (look it up it's an interesting city) where we have alot of nickle mining including 2 smelters, a mill, and a refinery that produces some of the highest grade nickle that's used worldwide, but I digress...
The company wanted to reduce emissions to meet new standards, they used to run 2 furnaces, so they refurbished 1 to make it way more efficient, and got rid of the 2nd, that cut emissions by 70ish%, then they built another sulfur scrubber, and particulate baghouse which reduced it by another 10%
I remember a time when solar wasn't economically feasible yet. As long as humanity can walk and chew gum at the same time, we can do what works now AND research what will help in the future. There is still new research happening on how to get more varieties of wind power in different environments that have until now not been considered good candidates for typical turbines, and the designs look so cool! I'd want one in my yard.
Unfortunately solar and wind will be reserved for DIY applications because they are actually economies of inverse scale. In essence the less of them you have the more value they provide. To see how this is a issue imagine the most simple grid system, you and a neighbor. If the neighbor has no solar panels, they can cut emissions by buying extra power. But if they install solar panels, they can't do that, decreasing the value of your power.
I work in renewables construction and I remember when a big project was 30 2MW turbines, and offshore wind in north America was a pipe dream. Now you have literal gigawatts of wind power being built every year, the average size of a utility scale solar plant has gone from 20-30mw to like 300, battery storage as an industry didn't exist even like 5 years ago. It's insane to see how things have progressed even within the last 10 years. Porducts get more efficient, processes get standardized, the total knowledge base grows day by day, it's a really good antidote to doomerism to think about how far we've come
@@MrPickelNickel If you can generate your own power at a long-term lower cost than you would otherwise pay someone else to deliver, then that itself has an inherent positive value -- as opposed to the lower value of paying for someone else's supply.
All power generation, whether they be corporately or privately owned, still has to compete in the marketplace of supply and demand. But now imagine another scenario where the supply is free and inexhaustible -- why would I pay someone else to deliver me air to breathe when I can do that myself for just the cost of living?
Solar is kinda stupid in some locations
Here in northern maine there’s a big push and literally thousands of solar panels being put up! Great right? No it’s a waste of money since the panels are currently under a foot and a half of snow. And will be under that snow for literally 5 months of the year! Sad waste of money and destroys our environment… rather have a windmill working 24/7 and be more visible and louder. Atleast that’ll work!
@@jocaleb0236 That's not necessarily true, snow is a pretty diffuse material, so light can penetrate through a shockingly deep layer of it. Also, the panels themselves absorb sunlight so even in pretty cold weather snow can melt off them. If they're fixed tilt they're generally built at such an angle that snow can slide off them once the panel starts to heat up, and if they're motorized they're generally programmed to go to their full tilt once a day to shed snow as well. That's to say nothing of the fact that the physics of the technology actually makes them more efficient in colder weather. I'm not trying to say there's no output losses during the winter, but it's mostly because of overcast weather and shorter days, not snow cover
My favorite climate graph is the XKCD one on the history of the Earth's climate. It's so long that you almost forget what you were looking at it for until you suddenly reach the modern day and it makes its point without needing to make any point at all. Data speaking for itself, super impressive.
I love that graph too!
It's also dishonest because we only have accurate data for 150 years. Most of the data is derived from oxygen isotope levels in sediments with accuracy of about 1 million years. We just don't know what kind of short term spikes there are. And it's not ethical to mix 2 kinds of data like that. It's like measuring the weight of a mouse and the average weight of a thousand mice based on the size of their shadow alone.
@@arvopenaali896Yeah, damn dinosaurs with their gas-guzzling cars and unrepentant inflationary economic practices. I mean, how can we know what the planet's condition will be a million years from now, it's not like we have predictions or projections or even wild speculation.
Thank you for mentioning it, i hadnt seen it before! Its number 1732 of the comics, if someones looking for it.
@@arvopenaali896 Ethics gets a little fuzzy, when trying to prevent the collapse of civilization. Ideally, yes, only pure data should be used. But pragmatically, there are too many people outright _lying_ about the climate, and it's not effective to try to combat those lies purely by pointing out the absence of data.
Because of how the human brain works, that just isn't persuasive enough, and it becomes important to note the extent to which we _do_ have a lot of data about the past. While that data is not perfect, it still _strongly_ suggests that anthropogenic climate change is by far the most swift and extreme change in the global climate which has ever happened.
It's important to remember that one of the reasons we derived a lot of that old climate data from things like oxygen isotope levels, is because there is a distinct _absence_ of evidence of any and all of the other _side effects_ of rapid and extreme changes in climate, like we're seeing today. For example, mass extinctions are _very visible_ in the geological record, and if there _were_ more sudden and dramatic spikes in the Earth's climate over that time span, we almost certainly would have noticed the death tolls of those hypothetical extreme climate spikes by now.
2:23 I think it's useful to put that level of carbon tax into a consumer perspective. It takes burning about 112 gallons of automotive gasoline to produce one ton of CO2. 112 gallons of gas costs ~$330 in St. Louis, so a $250 carbon tax would instantly nearly double the price of gasoline - not exactly going to be a popular policy to propose any time soon. Hank's "would break a lot of things" analysis checks out!
Well, 425 liters of gasoline would cost around 470 USD in Québec, Canada. 450 USD in Germany. Still less than 580 USD, but not that far. If you introduce that slowly, it is possible. Now, it will definitely be unpopular in St.Louis, no doubt.
@@Dirk462 425 litres of petrol is $775 here, in the UK
Petrol £1.44/l
Diesel £1.51/l
@@MrPagan777 and behold, the UK did not break!
I mean, we did, but not because of the petrol prices…
fuel will skyrocket in price even if it gets replaced by a purely market solution, because of the economics of scale disappearing. We might as well start bumping the price up now and use the revenue to fund climate saving projects, while there's still a climate to save
Hi Hank! I'm a PhD student at the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions at ASU and it was really cool to see you cover this technology in a vlogbrothers video!
If you would like to have a longer conversation about Direct Air Capture and its potential advantages and disadvantages in the future then I would be more than happy to chat on or off the record!
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A very useless degree. The whole premise is based on a lie.
How can a trace molecule in the air cause CATASTROPHIC weather changes when CATASTROPHIC weather changes happened back in antiquity before they burned EVIL CARBON DIOXIDE THAT PLANTS NEED TO GROW AND GIVE US OXYGEN.
I think we should take the gas of life and remove all of it from the atmosphere. I want to look at you, as this planet turns into MARS and we all start dying and simply say... I told you so.
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I’m curious because the report doesn’t seem to mention reforestation at all. I may be entirely wrong but I feel like planting more actual trees would be less costly than engineering a new tree. I think it’d be interesting to see where scaled reforestation efforts fall on this cost analysis, but since you’re actually doing the work would love to hear your thoughts/if this is the wrong question to ask and there’s a better one
Oh, you seem like a person who might know this... is there such a thing as non-Direct Air Capture and is it any more/less effective or have a different cost burden?
I've been suffering from a lot of climate existentialism recently, I do what I can, (my home electricity is renewable, I take public transport, I eat locally produced food) but I feel this unrelenting dread.
This video helped. It was extremely soothing to be reminded, that when my brain thinks: why isn’t anyone doing anything? I can remind myself that people are. That my job is to support those endeavors, 'cause I ain't no climate scientist.
BP invented the term carbon footprint as a way to deflect public outrage of their carbon emissions onto the singular persons responsibility. You feel this responsibility partially by design, by companies that emit the most and do not limit their own emissions.
Yes! I'm so glad this video helped you. And I'm right there with you on supporting the people who are working on this.
Really, these three things are the most an individual can do (other than vote) on climate change. I think what helps with the existentialism is the understanding that we are in a much better picture now than the doom-and-gloom scenarios of the 2000s, and really, the choice now is about how aggressively we collectively act to reduce human suffering down the line. It helps me at least.
Thanks for giving a damn. Too many people don't do anything and just put it off or say it won't matter. The fact of the matter is everybody doing everything we can is what's going to make it happen!
Unfortunately, very little of what a single person can do will actually genuinely help with climate change (props for using public transport though), and that's because the biggest polluter in the world isn't a community of people or even megacorporations; it's the communist dictatorship of China, producing *_over 30% of the world's carbon emissions by itself every single year._*
Not all is lost for you and I, though; we just have to push our politicians to be even tougher on China and punish it for its blatant disregard of the world, whether it be its stupid amounts of carbon emissions year after year, its overfishing on a global scale or its promotion of poaching for "traditional medicine".
I love that we have a Hank Green to explain complicated stuff - in realistic terms - so that I don't have to freak out about something I don't understand. And I can focus on stuff I can actually do or care about. You da best, Hank. Thanks.
ahhh yes keep allowing yourself to get indoctrinated because its so hard to figure plots out on your own.
Much as I have a very dim view of DACC, even I've got to admit that artificial trees are very cool. But yeah let's focus on the more important decarbonisation strategies first team!
Decarbonization equals death. Why do you want to kill us all?
Did you know, the sun affects the climate of the earth almost 100 percent where 0.04 percent of a gas affects the climate only 0.02 percent? So, should we remove all carbon so plants will die and we die?
We need to increase carbon to 2000 parts per million, like it was in the BC era. Strange people lived just fine then.
I do still wish though that more "carbon capture" conversation actually turned to habitat restoration as giving the natural ecosystems we've destroyed a head start at coming back to life is _the_ cheapest form of carbon capture. It's just extremely slow, requires a deep understanding of local ecosystems (so not monocropping a bunch of foreign trees), and requires a certain amount of commitment from humanity at large to not re-destroy that habitat in the future.
I've been following and supporting a charity on CZcams called Mossy Earth which _seems_ to be doing this sort of well-informed habitat restoration, but it's definitely very small scale. It has however shown me just the absolute scale of human destruction on the land. I wonder how much carbon would be sequestered by restoring Scotland's natural forests, or Icelands natural forests, two countries which have been logged bare over the centuries by human activity?
Yeah! I've been supporting Mossy Earth, too!
I would give anything to see the North American tall grass prairie again. It’s considered an extinct ecosystem with 98% of the prairies gone for agriculture, suburbs, etc. But the way the 10ft long taproots of big bluestem and switch grass sequester huge amounts of carbon deep in the ground is just astounding.
In the transportation part of the graph, it seems that promoting public transit and less car centric design and planning is missing. like sure, in the far future electric vehicles of all types would be the standard of the vast majority. But it should be much cheaper and quicker to promote more public transit infrastructure, especially where part of it is already electric (like some trains, trams, metros etc). Also it might make the transition to electric vehicles easier since there will be less cars overall.
Exactly! And electric bikes are taking off without much of an investment at all; think what even a small investment returns for biking, walking, and public transit! And largely the transformation is made possible by removing cars rather than needing to produce and consume a bunch of new EVs.
Not to mention all the particulate emissions and other negative externalities of cars regardless (or even worse) if they're electric.
As someone who rarely travels by car, I gotta say honestly cars just suck. People think it takes way more effort to get from A to B by bike or public transport but in the grand scheme of it, it really doesn't. Imagine what you can do with all that money saved! Cars are so expensive! (I personally work a 4 day work week, which is partially possible by not having to pay for a car)
I'm guessing this graph doesn't take into account personal behavioural trends. It's looking at how a carbon cost make certain technologist viable.
What you'd be asking is how would a carbon cost make certain consumption non viable. You'd have to calculate how a carbon cost cost translate into something like high cost of fuel or meat and then do the very complex job of predicting how that would reduce demand for a whole slew of products and what quantity of co2 reduction that would lead to.
A comment on this video from somebody in the field stated that with graph should be taken as a rough estimate. Is you start trying to add behavioural trends I would imagine that the graph would be at best an educated guess.
And putting people's choice to change consumption for purely intrinsic world savings motivations on wouldn't make much sense on these axis.
But I would be surprised if there wasn't another graph that should you percent of people making behavioural change Vs abatement.
Then you could compare the two side by side. But you would be able to add abutments because something like EV adoption and increase public transit usage and walking wouldn't add linearly.
Switching from a production based economic system to a repair and preserve economic system would go a long way toward fixing the carbon emissions problem. We've got lots of stuff...can we start learning how to take care of our stuff without throwing it away? Please and thank you, Hank, for looking into problems that sometimes keep me up at night, to which it feels like I can have little or no impact on. I bet if we all work together, we can come up with solutions that come closer to meeting everyone's needs.
The republicans got alot of hate for the fair tax but it would have basically done what you describe. Still regressive after the tax prebate though, larger prebate maybe? Carbon tax with prebate? I dont know but i feel the dems could adress those concerns while not killing the idea.
Unfortunately, so long as there is money to be made, powerful businesses and the politicians they're in bed with will find ways to make lots of it crookedly at the expense of citizens, societies and economies. Just as so long as there are opportunities for individuals and their followers to gain positions that give them power and wealth, be it material or monetary, there will always be people who try to get that power and then ab-use it to benefit themselves and whatever their own naturally derangedbeliefs and conditioning may be.
But I don't see how humanity could ever get past the use of money. It's all so hard-wired into our whole social and psychological conditioning and systems for literally everything now. Even communist regimes use and proliferate corruption with money. Many end up becoming oddly very similar to the capitalist superpowers too, especially at the top. As if these are just less and less meaningful banners to hang over ultimately just very slightly different ways of running deeply corrupt societies.
Not in the US, but there is something being done on this front as well!
There is a law in the EU that came into motion last year that forces manufacturers to make phone batteries easily swappable by the consumer. The adjustment period lasts until the end of this year and past that all new phones sold here have to adhere.
There is another legislation in the works right now that focuses on "the right to repair" - it will demand electronics to be repairable at an average repair shop, with easily available parts.
The change is coming!
@@stephenjohnson1758 I'd argue "it would basically" do the opposite. Income amount is increasingly less important once basic needs and a 'decent' standard of living are met.
Flat rate tax structures disproportionately effect lower income earners. 30% of $2,500/month is less raw-value than 30% of $25,000, but income from the latter will still have ample funds for basic needs and a 'decent', or better SoL depending on circumstances. That $2,500 income will likely have to sacrifice basic needs. A 'decent' SoL would probably be unachievable. This is small scale.
Think how that translates once you include earners or companies making 7+ figures. Raw numbers fail to represent reality. There is nothing "fair" about a flat rate tax.
Maybe one could argue it has merit if they address the elephant in the room, but it's basically a certainty that any form of a "Fair Income" policy would produce swift, and severe backlash.
I think you gotta remove the incentive for eternal growth under capitalism for that to happen
Hey hank, would you maybe make another video on your channel and break down the graph a little more? I have a masters from ASU in science and still had some questions about the graph.
Yes please! I would also be super interested in seeing any projected models/graphs that include time as the third axis
Yeah that graph may have some great data but whoever designed it made it really unclear.
Tell me why I was forced to watch an Exxon ad about carbon capture before this 😖
To make you less inclined to think burning fuel is a problem. There's a reason that fuel companies love carbon capture. If everyone's thinking about that as the solution then it removes any accountability for fuel companies and puts all the costs of solving the mess they created onto the tax payer.
They'll do anything to prevent people from acting.
Even pretending to be the good guys.
If you think about it, Exxon just paid Hank to debunk their own propaganda... that's a win-win in my book.
Definitely will come down a lot. Solar used to be INSANELY expensive, even for a small panel, but now it's relatively cheap. I remember spending $35 on a 6W panel some years ago; now you can get 100W panels for $100 or less
its not really the same problem that made solar expensive. solar back then was bad, small scale and immature technology while now most of those things are fixed. The problem with direct capture is that you MUST use the same amount of energy to capture the Co2 as was released when it was burned because its fundamentally a physics problem
@@reahs4815 the cost of the technology will come down tho - new processes to build the devices will become more efficient, increased production scale will lower per-unit cost; operating costs may not drop, but production costs certainly will
Both may be a matter of incremental improvements compounding over time @@reahs4815
@@reahs4815 carbon sequestration BACK into a fuel is what takes the same amount of energy. Sequestration through selective attraction like exhibited here does not take as much energy - but the scale to do it is large - it takes money because to do it to scale takes large areas of adsorptive material - not because it takes a ton of energy to collect.
Like most climate-related technology: work on direct carbon capture should've been massively prioritized in the 90s, when there was still plenty of time to get it going really efficiently before lots of lives started getting directly impacted.
Right now we're the guy who waited until 2AM before his finals to start studying. Everything we need to be doing now is extraordinarily urgent.
So while we're all waiting for the magic of "costs coming down," millions of people around the world will be suffering more and more. We, being extremely rich and extremely well protected by having happened to have been born in the seat of power of a global fiscalmilitary hegemony the likes of which the human race has never seen, can sit blissfully in this nice belief that it'll be fine eventually when costs come down doesn't change much outside the simulacra we live our comfortable lives in.
It is as the ancient saying goes. "The best time to build mechanical trees was 24-34 years ago. The second best time is today."
That is how the saying goes, right?
To be fair, this is true for every trick to reduce carbon emissions😕
The message at the end of this video seemed very wholesomely Mr. Rogers-esque. 'Look for the helpers.'
That graph is perfect for explaining that point. I do feel like it leans heavily on the technology side of emission prevention (like electric vehicles) and doesn't address a change in behavior like living in a transit oriented place, which would have positive effects. I wonder if the associated cost could be quantified.
Yeah like i was wondering where the hell Public transport is in the chart
Investing in public transit and active transportation is *so* much more cost effective than electric cars. It's ridiculous for any climate resource to not have that at the forefront of its transportation section, let alone to omit it completely.
Working from home has done a lot to reduce carbon.
"The only reason we haven't done that yet is because it takes time and work to build the infrastructure"
It does take time and work, but actually the more significant reason is because politicians prefer to take money from big oil rather than do much about the problem (and that's been the case for decades).
This actually has a really cheap and easy solution: vote.
(Okay, fair enough, convincing people that what politicians are doing needs to change and to vote is hard, but it's a clear problem with a clear solution, and voting certainly doesn't take much individual investment.)
Also, while some may legitimately think it sounds like a good solution, many people talk about carbon capture because that's a solution that means we can just dump the problem on scientists and not worry about it or do anything beyond that. Once you know how (not) feasible it is at present, it becomes little more than a red herring, a distraction to absolve oneself of responsibility.
I work in the climate field, though I’m not a scientist. I got to visit a carbon sequestration demonstration project that takes carbon dioxide from an adjacent power plant and turns it into an aggregate ingredient for concrete (basically chalk pebbles). The CO2 is locked away close enough to permanently for climate purposes.
Two of the main engineers were older guys who would normally work at a chemical plant or oil refinery, but now they work trying to sequester carbon, using relatively cheap and well known chemistry techniques. It wasn’t ideological for them, but they talked excitedly about squeezing every bit of efficiency they could from this demo plant. It was one of the first times I felt hopeful in a few years.
I took one of the pebbles home with me and put it on my desk because it reminds me that there's hope.
Always appreciate a Hank Green climate change video
Frfr
You're my favorite climate graph +
no u
:blush:
Awwwww so nice❤
Right!
this should be one of those meme valentine cards
Surprised and disappointed that Portland cement doesn’t appear on that graph. Cement manufacturing is currently 8% of our anthropogenic CO2 footprint. And there are functionally equivalent cement processes today that are carbon-neutral or even carbon-negative. But the capital costs are very high, the market is stable, and customers are conservative (in an engineering sense, not a political sense). If we could push these technologies rapidly, we could get rid of 8% of the CO2 emissions in a decade.
My guess is the data set must’ve been focused on energy. Industry (steel+cement+chemicals) and Ag (land use, N2O, etc.) are heavily related to energy topics, but also have those aspects where they warrant an entirely separate conversation.
Yes, there's new "bio-cements" that contain compounds that absorb all the carbon dioxide cement emits as it cures. And now they're just as strong and capable as old cements. But they're still more expensive, so barring a carbon tax, that still needs to come down.
The same goes for steel. Folks have figured out how to smelt steel with just electricity (and all that electricity can come from renewable sources) but right now, it's more expensive than ordinary steel.
This graph is arguably things we/the government can invest in to reduce CO2 production. So if we build offshore wind based electricity, we can run less coal power plants. So the question is what would we invest in to replace the concrete in use? Its quite possible that there is something we could subsidize to reduce concrete useage but where does it start costwise? If you have a better answer than I do I would sugest you organize your thoughts and present it somewhere because reducing cement usage as well as other things not listed like methane production from farms sounds like a great idea.
Ooh I hadn't seen it before but this is now my favourite graph too! I work with decarbonization scenarios, and the graph so clearly shows the point that I often want to make, which is, if you want to get to net-zero, you need the more expensive strategies too, not just the once you can make money from. Picking the low hanging fruit is good and all, but it won't fill the basket so you might as well start building a ladder.
I cannot wait for your Anthony Padilla interview today!
Seriously, two of the most wholesome CZcamsrs together!!
You do an amazing job at reminding me that these huge, scary problems are solveable. I super appreciate that.
Psst.. Its not a huge scary problem. It doesn't exist. The real problem is our atmosphere doesn't have enough co2. Decarbonization will kill us all.
@@darksideblues135 Moana Loa just recorded over 425ppm for the first time ever.
@@darksideblues135 yeah believe the oil companies rather than climate scientists. Yeah.
Unfortunately all these problems are not really solvable, this graph assumes you can replace energy from fossil fuels which is not true. A lot of processes need to be electrified and this is part of the solution but we will also need a massive effort of sobriety to limit the damage
@@darksideblues135you are not immune to propaganda
The conversation feels incomplete without a discussion of the individuals and the systems which are the main barrier to reversing environmental change. I would love to hear you talk about those elements, Hank
That's what sociologists and political scientists are for.
He cant because the sun does most of the change, like 99 percent of it. So how do you legislate that? I know. More taxes, less freedom.
You know what baffles me? How can you all continue to believe thus nonsense when every climate change prediction has been wrong since they started thus psyop? How can you guys forget second grade science when the teacher told us CO2 was critical for plants to grow and give us oxygen? Why would you advocate for decarbonization? And the people who want it, wants to kill most of us off and take our private property away and make us eat fake meat and bugs?
Think just for a moment. Meanwhile, I am going to look at a house next to the beach front property Obama bought. For some reason, even though they say water levels will raise massively, the same people keep buying up beach front property. Its weird right?
I work on direct air capture research! Its really fun interesting work, but also totally agree that we shouldn’t be focusing on it in our current climate conversation.
This is all very cool, but it does make me feel worried if we'll be able to get into the negatives in a timely fashion. Especially since world governments keep dragging their feet when it comes to making real changes... Then again the fact that there are plans being readied to set in motion is heartening. Anyways thank you for another awesome video hank ^_^
Thank you for explaining this!! I didn't understand the graph at all on first look so this is very helpful
Thank you for covering this sort of stuff, Hank. A lot of times, there's so much terrible news about the world and everything feels doomed. Your videos highlighting these people doing really important things helps fit some things into perspective. Just because I'm not focusing on it doesn't mean it's not getting done. Even though I can't contribute to this research, being aware that it exists and people care about it really put me a little bit more at ease about the future of the world.
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This video seems to focus mainly on mechanical techniques of carbon capture; what about biological means such as peat moss and green algae that have massive capacity to store carbon, and propagate themselves? That seems like a better direction for carbon capture to me, but I’m not sure how feasible these methods are at a large scale…
The green algae blooms in the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean are responsible for eating up co2 and producing 2/3rds of the oxygen we breathe. Sadly these blooms are around half the size they were 50 years ago due to the oceans being too acidic, and the layer of microplastic not helping either. I’ve heard of a theory about adding iron and phosphorus to the oceans which would cause huge blooms.
5:11 this reminds me a lot of your Web of Care video, which I do think about a lot. I’m a climate consultant and even within climate there are so many topics that I want to care about (DAC being one of them!) but I just don’t have the capacity to. This idea helps me trust that there are others out there doing their best to do the things I can’t 🤝
I think my real question about how to fix the climate crisis is not so much stuff like this carbon capture tower. It's how do we change our current economic system so that things which actually help people (and the earth) become a priority. That seems to be the big thing holding us back from making real change, or change in time to mitigate the damage we've already done. The fact that research like this is funded by the government and by universities indicates to me that having corporations rule our economy (and control our government through lobbying) is a huge and underrated part of the problem.
P.S. I love that my alma mater ASU is such a leader in this, and also is providing support for the Study Hall course I'm currently taking! Back to school again.
That's the fun part: We don't. Humans are just too susceptible to propaganda, and there are too many people who have something to gain from damaging the earth and society.
It's also not really an economic matter. You can't establish an economic system that inherently prioritises helping people, because that's not productive on anything but the largest scales. Any functional economy must rely on the emergent properties of supply and demand, where people naturally start needing things and other people naturally start making the things that meet that demand, because it's simply not feasible to run an economy like you're playing a strategy game, micromanaging every worker's products and needs as some omniscient overlord - that's why communism in practice keeps failing, no mortal or group of mortals can keep control of so many moving parts.
So the only thing that we can do is place regulations on a natural economy, to try to prevent the worst excesses and redistribute wealth from the people who by circumstance end up benefitting too much to the people who by circumstance end up suffering the most - and of course into the large scale projects that allow that economy to keep running smoothly, which includes making sure mass migration events and energy and food shortages caused by ignoring climate change don't bring everything screeching to a halt.
Provide an actual cost to environments. We typically treat the environment as free. Show the economic and monetary value of the environment and thus when we burn it our actions will have incurred an economic cost.
I did learn from you (in a video a few years ago) that all (big/world) problems are connected, and so working on one problem means you‘re working on all of them. And to think about other problems „that‘s what other people are for“. I took it to heart and it helped me a lot, I feel like this was a follow-up to that video.
Thank you for another very informative video, Hank. It does seem like carbon dioxide removal (CDR) might be used as spin to delay other climate action, but I think the outlook presented in the graph may be overly pessimistic. Some new CDR technologies are being developed and implemented, and some of these have the potential to be much cheaper than direct air capture and massively scalable.
My favourite is the process pioneered by Ebb Carbon in the US. Seawater is split into acid and base via bipolar membrane electrodialysis (BMED) and the base is returned to the sea to raise its pH, increasing the conversion of CO2 to bicarbonate. The acid can be used industrially or neutralised, e.g. by pumping it into basalt deposits. This process is much more efficient than other CDR processes, since a) very little land is needed, b) the process is fully automated and continuous, c) CO2 is never directly handled and d) no additional absorbents or chemical inputs are needed.
Ebb Carbon indicate their process will cost less than $100 per tonne of CO2 removed, suggesting that it consumes much less energy than a power plant generates while emitting the CO2. It should therefore be possible to use some of the energy from power production to capture all of the CO2 emitted, or more, with plenty left over for other uses. If the cost of the process is entirely due to energy use, at the current US price of around $0.168 per kWh, the energy consumption per mole of CO2 removed may only be around 95 kJ. The US generates about 430 kJ per mole of CO2 emitted. So if these numbers are right, it could capture all of its emissions by increasing its current energy production by 28%.
The process can use excess renewable energy generated when demand is low, and the outlook will only improve as power production becomes increasingly green. For example, Europe produces 530 kJ per mole of CO2 emitted, and Norway manages about 5500 kJ! Europe could power total CO2 removal with a 22% increase in energy production, and Norway would need an increase of just 2%. These are just back-of-the-envelope numbers, and scaling up the process will be very hard work. Nonetheless, it’s all quite encouraging :)
Seems to me we should be talking about all the things. Capture is the most expensive thing now, but solar and wind also used to be mind-bogglingly expensive, but now they're actually competitive! We are going to eventually need significant carbon capture--along with the overhauls to our energy system--to meet our climate goals.
I mean, sure, how many mouths ya got?
I would like to see a cost analysis of copicing the fastest growing bamboo and storing it in abandoned salt mines. Or mines filled with brine.
it's not the bamboo itself that sequesters the carbon it's the bacteria in the roots
so it's not about growing fast
Was nice to see a video from yall that wasn't just an ad for something you are working on.
I'm 21 so climate doom and anxiety has been a constant my whole life. One of my favourite parts of my marine biology degree is regularly hearing from the wonderful people trying to fix the problems. It's so nice to finally know that something is being done, that there is hope (the thing with feathers)
Climate change isn't real.
Im 21 and I’m not worried at all. Lmk if you want any tips
One thing we could do that would do a lot of good is to mandate a percent synthetic fuel in gasoline. Start by requiring that say, 1% of gasoline sold must be made from carbon pulled from the atmosphere. Then slowly ramp that up over time until gasoline and diesel are entirely atmospherically derived. A similar model was used to get ethanol production to scale. The same thing could be done for plastics. The oil industry has worked really hard to convince us that they are indispensable. They'll cite the benefits of plastics and synthetic polymers as why we'll need to keep drilling for oil, even if we move to all electric vehicles. But the truth is there's nothing we can make with oil or natural gas that we can't make with atmospherically-sourced carbon. And while sourcing from the atmosphere would be more expensive than from a hole in the ground, the cost is an illusion. When you actually consider the externalities and costs of dealing with climate change, making fuel from oil is way more expensive than making it from atmospheric CO2.
The cheapest way to reduce CO2 are (1) Efficiency increases, Jevon's Paradox not withstanding, (2) Aforestation, ReForestation, Reducing Logging and Fires;
Definatly low hanging fruit but with the caveat of area specific approach for example reistablishment of the mammoth tundra would abate more carbon then the forest and tundra it would replace and you could ranch there if that is your thing ( and yes even with ranching mammoth tundra would emit less co2 and methane because it eliminates thaw and rot)
Logging is actually quite beneficial in reducing co2. Wood products are literally captured carbon, the more trees get harvested and replaced the better as it pulls carbon and turns it into building materials. Efficiency in the industry makes sense to pursue but the more wood we use for materials the better. Logging is entirely sustainable and renewable as well, if it's done correctly. Logging companies have a vested interest in having trees around after all.
@@kevinhank17 actually that's not true research has shown that logging increases carbon emissions rather than sequestration. Moreover you're taking out mature trees which are pulling down carbonate an incredible rate and you were replacing them with tiny seedlings if at all. There's no question but that live healthy Forest pull down more CO2 than logging and replanting. It's not even close.
@@JonathanLoganPDX it seems you are right and I was using outdated and possibly intentionally muddled data, thanks. I used to work in the forest industry and you hear a lot about how sustainable the industry is so I'm sure I have buried biases about it being a positive thing. I'm sure there are ways it could become a carbon capture option, perhaps if limited to already managed forests and with more carbon efficient technology, but that would be a long way off.
I don't like that the transportation component makes no mention of cars vs. public transport
I am not an expert on this so take it with a grain of salt, however, it is worth remembering that especially wetlands but also forests are doing carbon capture. We just need to make sure the carbon they capture isn't released again (somewhat automatic with wetlands as the layers sink and compact each other and are anaerobic unless we dig up the peat, less so with most forests). It might be less land efficient than machines, but it requires less production (that usually in itself produces carbon emissions) and it is great for ecological diversity as well.
Wetlands work pretty well on their own, forests (and energy plantations) seem like they could benefit from a system where we grow biomass and then us it as fuel in a plant that captures the CO2 when it is concentrated (just after burning). That way we get energy, and the CO2 is not released as it would if we just let the wood decompose in the forest. Using the wood for products is of course nice, but we need to capture the CO2 at end of life for those products afterwards to not just move the problem into the future.
Carbon sequestering is still very much on the table of affordability and arguably one of the best options to capture carbon. It's plants. We need to adjust our farming techniques, bring back prairie lands and forests and make healthy soil and natural wild areas again. Added bonus, it doesn't JUST sequester carbon. It also provides natural habitats back to nature and many animals that are vulnerable, threatened and endangered will start seeing a bounce back because they actually have a natural habitat to live in. So let's all not forget this very very very important aspects of climate change, mass extinction events and pollution crisis.
Yeah exactly, that and increasing the use of wood frame buildings and wood products in general as well, up to a certain height using wood beams in building structures is far better than steel. Wood of course is basically captured carbon being sequestered in materials and replaced by new trees growing and capturing more carbon to be sequestered.
I'm curious if we can individually contribute to "carbon capture" by simply growing fast growing plants. Like, if I grow bamboo in my back yard, which grows insanely quickly, almost all of the plant is made of carbon from the air. If I then dry that and "sequester" it (by either building something out of it, burying it, or something similar), in theory, I'm capturing carbon at an average rate of 812 kg/m3 (50.6 pounds/ft^3) -the weight of dried bamboo. That isn't free (it takes space, more than anything), and it isn't individually going to put a dent in even regional emissions, but it's something. But is my math correct? Am I missing something? I think I'm doing everything else I know how to do, as an individual.
By all means, it's a great idea for you and your neighbors to garden in a way that sequesters carbon, heals the soil, uses water wisely, and supports native wildlife. For example, there’s efforts like the Homegrown National Park. There are just nuances that pop up when we start to think about a widespread movement.
Shooting from the hip here, but as someone who’s done some research on carbon markets, a few thoughts:
1) The math may need some factors to convert dry biomass -> C in that biomass -> CO2. Similar to what some forestry GHG management protocols will include, if you're curious!
2) For large scale adoption of any ag-based CO2 removal, it’s worthwhile for people to consider trade offs. Does the crop provide habitat for biodiversity? Does it need irrigation? Those sorts of questions. Maybe it would work in your backyard/climate/biome, but it’s worth consideration at large scales.
3) in terms of large scale support for such policy (e.g., if we got a lot of people to volunteer or if we got some sort of funding to help them do it), there would be concerns about verifiability and “permanence.” If a government or airline or whoever is going to support this, it would want some way to know i) it’s actually happening and ii) the bamboo will stay unburned for a good while.
@@77cicero77I wasn't looking to get carbon credits, necessarily. Just working within my area of effect to do what I can.
You can contribute more by trying to participate politically
Brilliant video Hank! Great job on making a complicated but very informative graph more accessible :)
That mechanical tree is super interesting to me 'cause I wonder if we can eventually do it on a small scale for enclosed spaces, like we have air filters and VOC filters. . . the pandemic had made many more people aware of air quality, and one of the most reliable indicators of whether or not there's a lot of rebreathed air (with virus particles) in a space is the CO2 level. So people are running around with CO2 monitors in theatres, on planes, in classrooms, in cars. . . sometimes with shocking results. Our brains don't work so good when CO2 ppm is over 800, and planes regularly go up to 1100+ (which makes me wonder, do we actually suffer from jet lag, or is a lot of it oxygen depletion). At the moment, the only way for normal people to decrease CO2 levels in a space is through exposure to outside air. But imagine if we could eventually have mechanical 'houseplants' on airplanes, in cars, and other places where it's less feasible to open a window (like indoors when someone has an allergy to pollen).
Maybe it's not applicable, but like.... we talked about "Technological Trees" capturing C02, but what about.... tree trees.... where would they be on this graph?
The nice thing about technology though is that it becomes cheaper over time the more it is used.
I study Sustainable Energy Systems and this graph is so interesting and amazing to me. I only wonder how the possibilties are for carbon capture from exhaust air?
Also big thanks for your refuse of pessimism.
I've always preferred carbonic acid capture. The concentration is better, you're dealing with water as a solvent, and with the increased prevalence of desalination for drinking water in large volumes is a natural addition to developing plants.
Interestingly, USNRL did a study into synthetic fuel production on fleet oilers about 15 years ago, and was able to produce everything from jet fuel to olefins to bunker fuel from seawater. It's even right here on YT if you want to watch a presentation on it!
Your content has been a pivotal part of my life :,) thank you for creating!
The fact that CZcams played me an Exxon ad about carbon capture before this video… 🙃
🤔
I'm a PhD student researching DAC on the process modelling side so it's great to see my area of research being talked about.
Yes it's expensive and uneconomical right now but in my opinion we will need it, not only for what Hank mentioned with the whole there's only so much other stuff can do, but also realistically the world unfortunately won't stop using oil and gas for quite a while, so we need to develop technologies that counteract what's emitted.
The reason we're researching it now is to try to find materials and processes and process conditions to bring that cost down. Time will bring costs down in an 'nth of a kind' way, but so will optimisation.
Natural ways to capture and store Carbon long term are often overlooked in these kinds of graphs i feel. Regenerative agricultural practices like rotational grazing or the restoration of wetlands can bind immense amounts of carbon (some studies like "REGENERATIVE ORGANIC AGRICULTURE AND THE SOIL CARBON SOLUTION" by Jeff Moyer et al. even suggest reg. grazing alone can sequester more carbon than we currently emit). Might be cool for you to look into for future videos on the topic, loved this one, just thought I'd share my perspective on optimistic alternatives to direct air capture
This is one of those videos that I feel worded my thoughts in ways I wish they could have formed on their own, I’ve argued against people that say that this carbon capture is all we need, and I’ve argued against people that say it’s a complete waste of time. Thanks for the video Hank.
Dang Hank, you've had your coffee today. I had to check if my play-back speed was turned up lol
I work in a lab that looks for molecules that are design to capture carbon with really low energy, it looks a lot like the tree thingy actually. Mostly, the commercialized version captures CO2 out of a smokestack where it's more concentrated before it gets into the air. Cool to see you talking about DAC, but I'd love to see a mention of other forms of carbon capture. Look up CALF-20 if you're interested
4:44 hi hanks, thanks for this video, it is very helpful to understand this graph.
I want to mention that research can help not only reduce costs, but also help the “scaling” of the graph. That is, later on, we may discover ways to extend when a technology is no longer beneficial with the amount of money (i.e. the point where it flattens). This is different from changing the slope of the line (which is also captured by reducing the cost per ton) because it means the problem can be simply monetary and political levels of difficult instead of ‘we literally have to figure out physics to solve the problem’
Sometimes it can be years between watching a vlobrothers video, just because I don't feel like it or whatever, but there's a reason I stick around
I would love to hear Hank talk about the carbon capture potential of soils
Thanks for the video, and the graphic and surrounding explanation.
I liked the way you went all over the place with scattered thinking - it pretty much mirrored my way of thinking and was very useful !
This is such a helpful explanation of that graph and all of the context that goes into it!
Thanks so much for showing this and for mentioning how research shifts the MAC cost to abatement gets ignored by too many.
We already have carbon capture - plants. And not only trees, but also wetlands are very nice.
As a Canadian with a nationwide carbon tax (technically, it depends where you are, but bear with me) it's interesting to see which carbon abatement technologies should already be feasible and well underway in our country! I know work is ongoing, but theres just so much more that needs to be done
You touch on the fact that big companies have an incentive to focus on carbon capture as a deus ex machina that will save us all so they never have to transition but that's very clearly the main purpose of all of this research and investment at the moment.
Hank and John are treasures of our generation ❤ thank you for existing and for giving so much to the world ❤❤
It would be great if hank showed us more cool stuff like this every once in a while
hi, I love this sort of content and would love to see more of it - also, i felt like some of it went a little over my head - could you make another video to break this down even further and give more graphs and context? would really love to understand more
Interesting video, subscribed!
Just one tiny remark:
When solving a problem, in this case the energy revolution, a scientific analysis should start with the fundamentals, so also for the question which energy source(s) could replace fossil fuels.
The first question to answer in the selection process is to verify what the present global fossil fuel energy consumption quantity is which needs to be replaced. The second question is: what energy source could replace the same quantity or at least a SIGNIFICANT part of this quantity.
At this moment around 4% of global primary energy came from nuclear power to produce electric energy. The known global uranium ores that are economically exploitable suffice for around one (1) century of the current production electric energy as stated by the World Nuclear Association. Now keep in mind that electricity is only 20% of the World Total Final Energy consumption (TFC), so at present nuclear power provides less than one (1) percent of the TFC.
Even a non scientific trained person can see that nuclear will never play a significant role in the energy revolution.
Now lest see what the global potential for wind energy is:
Archer and Jacobson (*) estimated that 20% of the global total wind power potential could account for as much as 123 petawatt-hours (PWh) of electricity annually [corresponding to annually averaged power production of 14 terawatts (TW)] equal to around 7 times the total current global consumption of electricity (comparable to present global use of energy in all forms). Their study was based on an analysis of data for the year 2000 from 7,753 surface meteorological stations complemented by data from 446 stations for which vertical soundings were available. They restricted their attention to power that could be generated by using a network of 1.5-megawatt (MW) turbines tapping wind resources from regions with annually averaged wind speeds in excess of 6.9 m/s (wind class 3 or better) at an elevation of 80 m.
* CL Archer, MZ Jacobson, Evaluation of global wind power. J Geophys Res 110, D12110 (2005).
Even a non scientific trained person can see that WIND energy can fill in the World Total Final Energy consumption (TFC).
This is so interesting! Thank you for sharing this Hank 😊 makes me feel better about this whole situation!
I have been feeling overwhelmed by the news cycle and ever looming thread of clinate change lately. It was nice to see an uplifting video which managed to give me a little hope for the future. Thanks!
Can we just take a moment to appreciate the design of the graph? It is such a good graph that Edward R. Tufte could put it in the newest edition of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.
I may have missed it as I skimmed through the reference page but it didn’t appear that the environmental impacts, to include carbon emissions, to Hilda these solutions were factored into the MAC chart. It is critical that data is also tracked to realistically ensure it is a viable solution.
Okay, as an actual scientist who has done research on this topic in the past for my MSc, a few things to unpack here:
1. You are really hyper-fixated on the monetary cost of doing these things, and it's somewhat worrying. But if that's the only way you can understand climate change, here you go: consider the cost of relocating millions to billions of people due to rising oceans. Consider the cost of rebuilding and/or fortifying currently existing infrastructure all around the world due to shifting climate patterns and increased frequency of extreme weather events. Consider the cost of emergency aid for those affected by the more frequent weather events. Solving the climate crisis can be seen as an investment, one that will prevent the listed costs from increasing later on. Perhaps a good metaphor would be paying down the principal on a loan to prevent the interest from bankrupting you later on.
2. You are absolutely correct in asserting that direct-air CCS is not something the general public should be considering; at least, not using the tech-based version. Nature has been capturing carbon for longer than we have existed, and trees are what pull it from the air. Additionally, planting trees is relatively inexpensive and actually creates jobs. The only catch is that we need to not cut down the trees after planting them. If we maintain a state of planting more trees than we cut down, we will successfully be reducing CO2 in the air. Now, this is not to say tech-based CCS is useless; far from it, in fact. The best use-case for tech-based CCS at the moment is in factories and plants where literal tonnes of CO2 are being emitted; you can use CCS there to capture the CO2 before it can enter the atmosphere, then store it until CO2 activation gets better (it's really not good right now, we need better catalysts and a way to not spend insane amounts of energy getting it out of CCS).
3. Does this actually take the CO2 emissions of mining Li into account for EVs? Because I don't think this actually takes CO2 emissions of mining Li into account for EVs. Not to mention the fact that a full-scale replacement of gasoline-driven vehicles with EVs is laughably impossible on the necessary time-scale, given how quickly we can mine Li.
4. Nuclear fission is a fantastic stopgap until we achieve nuclear fusion, but only if you have the infrastructure already in place or are close to doing so. Take a look at how long France took to implement their nuclear infrastructure (which is fantastic), then imagine how much longer it would take the US, as an example. You mention ignoring time as a variable, but we really can't afford to. If a country isn't part of the way to implementing widespread nuclear fission already, starting now is a fool's errand (and to put it in terms aligned with this video, a waste of money).
5. Your last point is kind of odd; I'm not sure effectively telling people, "don't worry, someone else will fix it" is a good mindset to encourage. I'll admit that scientists suck at communicating with the public for a lot of reasons, one of which is lack of education/knowledge among the layman when it comes to topics like this. But that doesn't really seem like a good enough reason to discourage people from TRYING to understand. The biggest obstacle to success with reversing climate change right now, at least within the general public, is apathy. People should care and people should be involved, even if that just means being aware of what is going on.
this ^
The ECONOMIC COST is $/ton x tons. Starting with a low tax would speed up conversion--and we can slowly ramp up the tax rate so that the total annual economic cost remains constant.
moving the insane subsidies the fossil fuel industry gets to renewables and nuclear would be a good start, after that we talk about taxing fossil fuels.
Speaking as someone in the DAC field: one of the coolest and most creative parts of our research is finding ways to arbitrarily reduce that cost. For example the company im at currently is trying to push the $/ton down to 100 by producing valuable side products that can offset the energy/CAPEX cost of our plants.
I liken to how the early adoption of solar panels on houses need to bring soem extra benefit to the homeowner (lower utility costs) in order to make them worth it.
This is such an interesting graph, thank you for sharing it! I’d be interested to see how passive carbon sequestering through things like conservation, making urban areas more green, or wet land restoration would play into it. I’d love to see lots more things on it honestly. What is the return on regenerative agriculture? If we build in a way that uses passive heating and cooling what would the energy saved amount to in terms of carbon abatement? You’re so right, there’s so many things that can be implemented right now, we don’t need to wait until this technology is ready to start making progress!
"Look at this climate graph! Every time I do, it makes me math" - Hank Green
How did we get in the red, and how the heck do we get ahead?
Graphs!!!
And I liked it that you were personally talking to me! Cheers. I'll fill in your survey - and I subscribed.
I really like that graph too but i have one thing to add though: I think (and i think I'm pretty justified to make that assumption) is the reason many powerful companies, countries and other entities with power and money invest a huge amount of money into stopping/slowing the expansion of infrastructure that let us emit less CO2 trough lobbyism, investing in new fossil infrastructure that then needs to work for 30 years to pay the cast back and generate revenue etc. essencially pushing the everything further to the right in this graph and also increasing the time to get there.
I think visualising that in this graph would be a powerful tool to show the influence of the fossil powers (companies, russia and other countreis with large fossil expoerts etc.) on the reduction of CO2-emissions and why we can't just leave it up to the market to fix everything with the right incentives. But that dosen't mean that a carbon tax or similar concepts aren't a huge and important part of the solution to the climate crisis.
If we were able to turn carbon solids into raw manufacturing materials the price would come way down. It might even invert and become a form of mining for industry. I hope someone is working on THAT.
That would be nice! A few industries could replace their natural hydrocarbon shipments with the products of these kinds of plants.
It would be very energy-intensive and costly, so it won't happen without a carbon tax, but it's a good goal.
I think I needed to see this today. It's +7C outside when it's usually supposed to be -5 to -10.
I am very anxious about all of these record-breaking/once-every-century events happening more and more. I don't think I'd do well in a post-climate apocalypse world.
The good news is that this winter is extraordinarily warm thanks to oceanic effects. Next winter will be cooler.
The bad news is that next winter won't be _so much cooler_ that everything will be back to normal. This is an unusual spike, yes, but things are still trending upward.
@@General12th I hope so, I want my negative 30s
This is actually a very enlightning graph, the average debates don't even come close to thinking where is the usefulness of a certain thing.
How did you come by it?
Yes, these ideas can be distractions and excuses to avoid change, but they're also essential to maintain hope for our future, when it often feels like we're doomed to the worst case scenario. So it's important to talk about BOTH points. It is theoretically possible to undo a lot of damage. ALSO it is far far cheaper and less deadly to prevent it than to fix it. Have hope, but not excuses.
maybe an analogy to a somewhat easily manageable disease is apt here? like say AIDS or diabetes. Historically they were a death sentence or at least an amputation and now they are completely manageable to coexist with. But it is probably more expensive to keep the ongoing treatment compared to initially avoid and reduce the risk if them.
To be 100% fair, we haven't been doomed to a worst-case scenario in a long time. The 8.5 model is unlikely even with tipping points.
This really underpins how the most important thing you can do in the fight against climate change is politically advocate for a carbon tax. A $50 dollar tax per ton of carbon equivilent either imported or extracted in the US would be a 44.4¢ premium per gallon of gas (plus transportation costs and overhead). Pigouvian taxes, taxes that compensate society for behavior that results in externalities, are the most effective form of tax because they result in no dead weight loss, and only benefit society by making non externality producing alternative activities more economically attractive.
We will never be able to will ourselves to reduce carbon emmissions as long as it is profitable because the free market creates the game theory senarios that force us into the nash equlibrium that is climate change. The only way to solve this problem is to price in the emissions.
Listening to Hank talk about climate change and how we can fix it gives me hope for the future. Thank you, Hank. 🙏🏻
The curve also embodies, by layering in a certain order, a set of 'preferences' or biases as to what make sense. If they were listed in a different order....
Plus, as mentioned if it was a 3d curve with time as a third axis the money axis would severely distort.
What's missing is the graph that show how early investment in technology learning can drive down the cost, especially if you have an established science that just needs manufacturing & operational efficiency - the learning curve. It's been done for wind, and solar, and silicon (Moore's law).
What also needs to be addressed is the climate sceptic misunderstandings (they need to be encouraged to understand more so they can see their miss-steps - see Sabine Hossenfelder's "I Misunderstood the Greenhouse Effect" and how others have really misunderstood). Far more benefit can be gained from updating the understandings of those 'floating voters'.
CC is one of those "you don't have to change your life. Everything will be fine" solutions. That's why its appealing. They don't care if its a wild fantasy.
The one solution that isn't on your chart that I'm surprised nobody talks about: Stop eating meat and rewild the land that we use to grow animal feed. 80% of ag land only gives us 20% of our calories. I'm always shocked when I see environmentalists that have no problem funding factory farming by buying meat from the grocery store.
💯 my thought. Might show what kind of influence the animal agriculture still has, that this factor is so often not represented.
Why is public transit not mentioned, but only electric vehicles?
It's comforting to see that this graph exists and that there are lots of smart, caring people out there working on a plan to solve these problems
It’s worth mentioning that air capture of CO_2 works a lot better if you filter the air at the top of smokestacks in high-emissions factories/refinement plants. It’s not the image people typically have of direct air capture but it technically is, and it is actually economically viable and environmentally impactful to do this.
We currently have regulations in the USA requiring factories to filter their emissions this way, so it is getting done, but it could be a lot better, for not that big a cost!
The US dropped from 6GT to 5GT because we off-shored massive numbers of factories to other countries AND we shifted from Coal to Natural Gas.
Renewables have definitely played a role, and as we adopt them faster and faster, their role in genuinely reducing emissions will only get more significant.
Exactly, all the CO2 is still being pumped, just in China now because we exported all the industry there. The fact that he never clarifies these points makes me distrust him.
@@potpu If that was true, then emissions would be accelerating, but they're not.
@@General12th what do you mean? worldwide emissions haven't peaked
@@potpu They probably have, if not last year then this one. But acceleration here means change in emissions rate. That's been going down for many years, which is why emissions have (or soon will) peak and why they'll start decreasing more and more quickly.
Not represented: emissions from agriculture (notably animal agriculture, like cattle). Cost to avoid those emissions are actually…. Not costs at all. At least financial costs, but a rewriting of our food culture. Something we could literally do today - and what many of us are already doing.
This was a CO2 only graph
@@SuperExtremeTNT correct, hence why I said “not represented.” To Hank’s point, we don’t need to be focusing on all these difficult and expensive solutions for climate change. My point being is that we have a very inexpensive and relatively achievable AND highly effective mitigation opportunity, that almost always gets left out of discussions of climate change solutions - and that we should focus more on it.
@@PaaMrefu A new graph to incorporate methane + water vapour etc as well as CO2 to compare all methods
There still needs to be work on carbon capture, it'll eventually come down in price and stuff needs to be worked on in parallel but it definitely isn't the priority right now.
No doubt all the curves on the MAC chart will move to the left in the future. Do we have historical charts so we can see the progress we've already made in the past years and decades?
I'd love to see those!
honestly though, its pretty cool that capturing carbon already exists even if its really expensive
Completely agree. I do wonder if this trend is just part of "progress".
> Thing gets widespread attention because it's novel.
> Public loses interest as novelty wares off.
> > Optional: Public perception turns negative due to early stage costs.
> Thing gets cheaper, begins being implemented.
> > Conditional: Negative public perception must be addressed.
> Thing becomes standard.