4 Megaprojects That Could Reverse Climate Change | Answers With Joe

this video is brought to you by audible whenever we talk about traveling to Mars inevitably the subject of terraforming comes up sure we could travel to Mars we could land on Mars we could live on Mars for a little while anyway but to colonize Mars to actually become a multiplanetary species we're gonna have to do a lot of fixing up around there so we cache lieth row out the weekend you know nooks of poles build giant electromagnetic shields and crashed comets into Mars to get water out of it you know we're endlessly optimistic about all the ways we could terraform Mars but also inevitably in these conversations you start having people saying things like it's crazy to even think about going to Mars when there's so much that we need to do to our own planet and to those people I say yeah you're absolutely right renewable energies have made huge strides in the last few years we can't discount that wind and solar are actually on par with coal for for price and that's huge the Renewable segment has grown and just dramatically but so has the overall market for energy as developing nations become more electrified our need for energy goes up right along with it and with that the use of fossil fuels even though the Renewable segment has gone way up in the last ten years eighty percent of our transportation energy needs are met by fossil fuels and that is the percentage that has not changed it's a 70s more than 1,600 new coal plants are being developed or planning to go online in the next year this is not movement in the right direction and all the while this year the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued their most stark report to date and they've all been pretty stark they say that if we're going to avoid the tipping point of two degrees Celsius rise we're gonna have to reduce our carbon emissions by half by the year 2030 and go completely carbon neutral by 2050 we have literally 12 years to turn this thing around and while there's a lot of great things happening in terms of clean energy and battery storage solutions it's not happening fast enough and overall we're still going in the wrong direction why are we so gung-ho about terraforming Mars but not our own planet what if we apply some of that same thinking to the climate change issue it might look like this global warming has become unfortunately a very contentious topic these days so this video isn't meant to talk about whether it is or isn't happening it is that's a whole different conversation and for that I've actually got a whole playlist I put together right here for this video regardless of your opinion or your belief system I want you to just imagine something just imagine that we have progressed as a species to the point that we can actually control the temperature of this planet again we're applying the same kind of thinking that we're using about terraforming Mars to Geoengineer earth what if we could adjust the temperature of the earth just like it was a giant thermostat need a little more greenhouse gas just add it you know want to reduce the temperatures a little bit done you can even all be monitored by a smart system or an AI maybe this is far-fetched or maybe this is just the inevitable step that a species has to take to become a Kardashev type one civilization you know total control over the environment and resources of our planet so even though the climate and the weather that that climate spawns are incredibly complex when it comes to adjusting the temperature of the earth there's really only two knobs to tinker with there's the amount of heat energy that's hitting the Earth from the Sun and the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that trap that heat the solutions presented here are various ways of adjusting those two knobs the first one is called biomass energy with carbon capture storage I've talked about biomass as a renewable energy source in a previous video but the sparknotes version is basically it's using biological fuel to burn and create energy every burned wood in the fireplace that's biomass of course burning anything puts carbon back up into the atmosphere which kind of defeats the purpose but biomass is considered carbon neutral because the carbon that you're putting in the atmosphere had come out of the atmosphere into the plants in the first place as opposed to coal which is digging up carbon that's been sequestered into the ground for millions of years and pumping that up into the atmosphere fossil fuels are additive biomass is carbon neutral but B II CCS I'm gonna call Beck's I don't know if everybody else calls it backs when it comes backs cuz I'm lazy but they take it a step further because they actually capture that carbon and the co2 hence the carbon capture a part of the name and then store it underground it's the storage part of the name this part of the puzzle makes Beck's carbon negative it's a way of creating energy that actually pulls carbon out of the atmosphere so a way it's just kind of a high-speed version of what really happens in real life you know plants absorb carbon they die and then they kind of decompose and get pushed down under the ground and eventually the pressure and heat creates coal and other fossil fuels this just accelerates that process now this is a video about mega projects and this would definitely be a mega project if we were going to implement it to the point that it could actually make a difference to the overall climate but I will say I'm a little bit cool on this method because let's just be honest it's gonna take a whole lot of land a whole lot of water and yeah a whole lot of energy to plant and harvest all those crops in fact some people say that the amount of energy it would require to do this would totally offset any savings in carbon that you would get so yeah but it is an interesting idea and it's a good jumping off point to the next mega project we're going to talk about here direct air capture the idea of direct air capture it's pretty simple you put giant scrubbers up that actually pull co2 out of the air and there's a couple of different companies that are leading the charge on this there's carbon engineering and British Columbia and climb works in Switzerland both operate on the principle of giant fans that sweep air over a filter coated with a liquid solution that binds to carbon dioxide now even though the co2 is at dangerous levels it's still only 400 parts per million so that's one molecule of co2 for every 2,500 molecules of air so yeah this requires some scale this liquid solution then has a co2 pulled from it and from there you can do with that co2 what you wish and this is where the two companies diverge climb work seeks to sequester the carbon underground where it gets absorbed into the rock to become carbonate now obviously this is the best option because it's totally pulling this stuff out of the air pumping it underground it is 100% carbon negative you're basically removing carbon from the atmosphere and moving into the geosphere it is also money negative these plants take a lot of money to build and operate and maintain and they aren't making any revenue from doing this so it's probably mostly gonna be funded through public funds and the government's now this seems to be what climb works is going forward but I could totally be wrong about that if you know better please correct me in the comments below of course in a perfect world we would see the writing on the wall all and throw a whole bunch of money at it and put these scrubbers all over the world and just fix the problem but the reality is that many of the dirtiest countries are also some of the poorest and they don't have the money to invest in this kind of technology in other countries like the u.s. don't have the political will but if things get bad enough in the near future we might find the existential will and decide it's worth it to just pony up the money and put these things up all over the world now carbon engineering takes a different approach they actually want to take the co2 that they capture and sell it and be able to make things with it and that way they can actually fund their operations right now they're focusing on creating synthetic fuels which they call air to fuel or a2f of course the problem with synthetic fuels is you're just gonna burn that and it's just gonna pull all that back in the atmosphere again that's considered more carbon neutral which is definitely better than burning fossil fuels but it's still not carbon negative it's still not pulling any carbon from the atmosphere I will say that is one thing that Beck's has going for it is that it's actually creating energy while pulling carbon from the atmosphere and by the way for any of you out there that are like well hell if we can pull the co2 out of the air why don't we just pull it out of the smokestacks when they're burning at the coal plants and before it ever gets to the air why don't we just do that and to that I say yeah exactly this is called carbon capture and sequestration and it's actually a pretty hotly debated topic the US government does offer tax credits to coal companies who put carbon capture and storage on their plants but it doesn't fully cover the cost of it so many coal companies aren't willing to pay for it because it would still cut into their profits still the fossil fuel industry has pushed this as an option because it lets them keep burning their fossil fuels guilt-free they just you know want the government to pay for it now many argue that the government shouldn't be paying for it because that's our tax dollars and we shouldn't be spending that money they should pay to do it themselves but this is a company so what they're going to do is actually raise the cost of their energy which would raise the cost of everything so we're paying for it either way and still others say that the whole carbon capture idea is a terrible idea because it gives us permission to keep burning fossil fuels and not focus on renewable energies but I'll let you guys fight about that in the comments respectfully now the best solution is one where we find a use for co2 that doesn't burn it but takes it out of the atmosphere completely something that creates a market around it that gives co2 value then direct air capture companies and coal burning companies could sell that co2 and a profit it would pay for itself now to find those kinds of solutions we have the carbon XPrize in the Virgin Earth challenge the carbon XPrize is the newest iteration of the famed XPrize by entrepreneur Peter Diamandis and the goal according to its site is to develop breakthrough technologies that will convert co2 emissions from power plants and industrial facilities into valuable products like building materials alternative fuels and other items that we use every day the winner of this competition will be announced in 2022 and they're gonna receive a 20 million dollar prize the Virgin Earth challenge is headed up by Richard Branson and it's got a twenty five million dollar prize and its goal is to find companies that can produce viable products with co2 they announced their eleven finalists this year and two of them work climb works and carbon engineering now some of the best options for this are creating bricks and building materials our current process of making bricks actually produces a lot staggering amount of co2 in the concrete making process but there's a company out there called solidia technologies it's actually kind of turned this equation on its head to where it actually requires co2 to make the bricks like it needs co2 to work so we pull co2 out of the air pump it into bricks and build our buildings and streets with it kind of Brian it's these kinds of solutions in this kind of thinking that actually uses our capitalistic economic system for our own benefit now those are some of the solutions and challenges of actually removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and now let's talk about how we keep that solar energy from hitting the earth in the first place the first is artificial volcanoes when I say artificial volcanoes I'm not talking about the little science project you made in the 5th grade I'm talking about emulating the Mount Pinatubo eruption from 1991 the Mount Pinatubo eruption put 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere creating a haze that spread around the world next we reduced the world's average temperature by 0.5 degrees for about 18 months massive volcanic eruptions have been thought to cause ice ages in the past in fact there was something called the Little Ice Age that was from 1645 to 1715 that was set off by a volcano and this was just a period where the world experienced unseasonable cold temperatures attempting to recreate this effect is called stratospheric aerosol injection si I study from earlier this year took a look at this option and tried to assess how much it would actually make an effect on climate change and the results are pretty promising it would require a fleet of about a hundred si I laughter soar sails and they would have to be engineered from scratch we don't currently have any planes that can fly at that altitude and carry that much weight to fly at that altitude we're talking about 20 kilometers up here it would require double the wingspan of an average jetliner in four engines instead of two and of course they need to be extremely fuel-efficient so that they're not just pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere kind of defeats the point these 100 airplanes would fly four thousand missions a year for 15 years at various latitudes to spread this particulate matter around the globe the upside of this project is it would actually cost very little in the grand scheme of things they estimated to be about two billion dollars a year which is peanuts and the global economy the downside is of course we're pumping tons of stuff up into the atmosphere I mean this is the kind of stuff that dystopian science fiction movies are made of but if things get bad enough this might be the least expensive Hail Mary play we have available a team from Harvard is actually planning on testing this next year by scattering particulates over a one kilometer area from a balloon and then testing the results it's called the stratospheric control perturbation experiment or scope X it'll be an interesting experiment to watch now the idea of permanently altering the atmosphere in order to say that doesn't sit well with you understandably so there's also the option of moving that cloud up into space some of the theorized a swarm of mirrors in low-earth orbit that can reflect this light before it actually gets to our planet there's only like a million problems with this for one low Earth orbit is already packed to the gills with satellites both working and dead which I've talked about in the previous video so adding to that problem probably not a great idea Plus solar radiation carries with it momentum that would slowly push these things out of orbit pretty short time but a much better idea is to move that mirror away from Earth to the l1 Lagrangian now the garage points for those who don't know are an area around the earth and all planets for that matter where the gravity of the earth and the gravity of the Sun kind of balance each other out so objects that wind up in the Lagrangian tend to kind of stay in the look around this is also why Jupiter has what they call Trojan asteroid like a couple of different groups of Trojan asteroids that actually follow Jupiter around the Sun the l1 Lagrangian the earth and the Sun about 1.5 million kilometers away or about 1/100 the distance of between the Earth and the Sun now the benefit here is obvious if you have a swarm of small solar shades out of the l1 the Grunch point you could actually configure these so that they could tilt and rotate so that you can let in exactly the amount of light that you want and the good news is in order to reverse climate change we only have to block 2% of the sun's rays but the good news stops there the Sun is big did you know the Sun is big according to a study led by Roger Angell the size of this swarm would need to be 3.8 million square kilometres requiring 16 trillion small shades to give you an idea of how many that is even if we were able to launch a million at a time we would have to launch every 5 minutes for 10 years from 20 different launch sites around the world like we would have to require some kind of new technology like a railgun or something to do this keep in mind though most satellites we've ever launched it once is 104 Cube sets into low-earth orbit oh and also we're going 6 times further away than the moon now another option would be to move an asteroid into the l1 point and then put some kind of mining robots on there that could kind of whittle away at it and create a cloud out of that asteroid that would then stay right there between the earth and the Sun and that might do the job but if we had a controllable Sun Shade out there combined with thousands of co2 scrubbers all around the world we could have complete mastery over our climate and we'd never have to worry about climate change again we would have a planetary thermostat now none of these solutions are going to be cheap now obviously the least painful option here is if the co2 that we're able to pull out of the atmosphere has some kind of viable product attached to it something that creates value for it but I think that might be pie in the sky thinking one way or another to fix this problem it's going to cost a lot of money but when these kinds of projects are to take shape and they will start to take shape and you start hearing about the prices of these things just keep in mind the price of doing nothing is way higher in the United States alone climate change-related natural disasters caused over 300 billion dollars in damage just in 2017 now before I close this up there are that say that embracing these kinds of options is a bad idea because it sort of gives us permission to keep burning fossil fuels and that's something that inevitably we're gonna have to get off of and this is true we are eventually going to have to get off of fossil fuels it is not an inexhaustible resource it will run out at some point so our focus on renewables and storage solutions are still very important but long before it runs out we have the capability of putting enough of it up in the air to make life if not impossible seriously miserable might actually make Mars look like a better option and that place will kill you if you take your helmet off so if we have the ability to pull co2 out of the air and regulate it maybe even get some good out of it isn't the argument not to do it just sort of pointless moralizing I mean of course we shouldn't have to do that but that's where we are right now it's just reality in football when it's ten seconds to go and you're five points down you throw a Hail Mary play because you got nothing to lose that's where we are right now with climate change time is not on our side it's time for us to embrace some Hail Mary plays of our own these are our climate change Hail Marys and there's many more of them obviously we can't put them all into one video and unlike football is not just one option we have all of them to choose from but we need to start taking them seriously now it needs to be said that massive mega projects aren't the only way to tackle this problem there's also a lot of smaller less obvious things that you can do yourself in your home and your backyards and your neighborhoods that can make a difference and if you want to learn more about that there's a book that I highly recommend it's called drawdown the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming by paul hawken which you can listen to for free at audible.com/asap our banana missions but actually pull them out of the air proposed by some of the leading climate scientists and policy makers around the world from vast mega projects like we just talked about two little things that you can do right around your home this covers it all by the way if you're not familiar with audible first of all crawl out from under the rock you've been living under but they are the premier audiobook service on the web pretty much any book that you want to read you can listen to it on audible every month audible members get one audio book of their choice and two audible originals which are exclusive to audible final mini where else I know it's often hard to get around to reading dry your day but audible is something you can do on the go you can listen to it on the way to the work while you're working out or if you're just trying to ignore Tony in the next cubicle over whose jaw clicks when he eats get that checked out Tony viewers this channel can get a 30-day free trial at audible and your first audio book for free if you go 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Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 579,182

Rating: 4.6731081 out of 5

Keywords: answers with joe, climate change, global warming, Biomass, Biomass energy with carbon capture storage, BECCS, Direct Air Capture, Carbon engineering, Climeworks, Carbon X Prize, virgin earth challenge, stratospheric aerosol injection, lagrange point, solar shade, terraforming, ipcc

Id: GfRo8_RfefA

Length: 19min 22sec (1162 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 17 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Gulyasarni66]

Now imagine EarthStrike and Extinction Rebellion with massive protests and strikes all around the world - while technical feats like this would be executed. Damn, climate change would be such a 'piece of cake' problem to solve for our species, if only we wouldn't have corrupt companies and ignorant people vehemently protesting the idea.

[u/Headinclouds100]

That was a good watch. I reached out to Climeworks a few weeks ago to ask about costs, and they said that it's currently about a 600k investment for a rig that removes 80kg of CO2 a day. The fact that CO2 won't get anyone rich makes me think that it should be governments and nonprofits funding removal.