*36C3 preroll music*
Herald: Now we come to Bernhard Stoevesandt. "Science for future?". Your
stage - your talk. Here we go.
*Applause*
Bernhad Stoevesandt: Thank you very much. OK. OK. This is not just my talk. This
talk has a history. I have a coauthor, Martin Dörenkämper, who is a colleague of
mine who could not come here, but - so, I will give this talk by myself, but we
worked together over the year on this talk because this talk has a history. And it's
a bit of the history of Scientists for Future, which is an association of
scientists that evolved this year, basically with the movement of those
students and pupils of Fridays for Future. And there were questions, you know, that
they took to the street and said, hey, we want a future. We want that things change.
And they demanded for politics to change. And this did not directly happen, but it
was questioned, so some - well - professional politicians said, well, they
should leave it to the professionals. And that's the point where actually a lot of
scientists and a lot of scientists I know, all where really mad at this because
they've been doing science and research for so many years. I mean, I don't know if
you saw the presentations before, how much effort is being put into this, into this
research to make better and better, better models. And what I will show you, this
presentation is about the results of the outcome of this and what this means and
still nothing changes. So they write papers, they write reports and, well,
nothing happens. And so the only thing we could say was basically, hey, they are
right. Things need to change. And that's why we got together and formed this
association. So there's a charta on this, which says basically what we do is we go
out and we try to inform people on the research, on the state of the art of the
research and how things are currently. And that's why I'm here. So that's exactly
what I'm doing here. So we go out to wherever and you can come to us and ask
for presentations, for discussions to get informed on this topic, on what this
climate change issue actually means. And this is the disclaimer now, I can tell you
this is not a good mood talk, okay? So, yeah. Because the topic is very serious.
So it's a bit different than I usually do it, in the end it will look a little bit
better than in the beginning, but nevertheless. So where are we currently?
So this is the current graph. This is all not research by myself. This is mainly
from IPCC reports, and this is from the report from last year on the 1.5 degree
report, which was made - basically done, or, put together because in the Paris
agreement in 2015, it was said, well, we, the world, or, the governments of the
world, want to keep the climate change - the temperature change - to well below 2
degrees, if possible, to 1.5 degrees, and the question was, hey, is this actually
possible? Can we make that? What do we need to do to do this? And so there has
been a lot of questions about this and a lot of research. A huge number of
publications came out on this topic: "Hey, what does it mean to have a 1.5 degrees
warmer earth?" "What does it mean to have a 2 degrees warmer earth?" and "Is this
actually possible to limit climate change to these temperatures?" And this is the
current state. I really love this graph because it contains a lot of different
things. So what we are talking about. So we have a pre-industrial period that we
use as a reference. So that's the period from 1850 to 1900 here. This is the
reference period where we say, OK, this was pre-industrial temperature and
everything afterwards, the changes from that are all referring to this. So 1.5
degrees or so would be the difference from this period. And then, what climate does,
it's not always constant. So every year, sometimes it's a bit warmer and sometimes
a bit colder. So what you need to do is you need to average. This is quite
important, because, for example, there is this year of - where is it? here - 1998,
there was a very warm year. And afterwards, for a long period, there
weren't so many warm years. And then there were some people saying: "Oh, yeah, look,
the temperature does not change anymore, so everything's fine now". And this, of
course, isn't true, because you have to look at average periods. So the red line,
this is the so-called floating average. So you always average with the years and this
gives us about the current temperature change. So this would be like a typical
climate period with like 20 years. You usually look at 20 years. But the problem
we have currently is, that the change was so drastic, that looking for 20 years,
then you would always have to go far back to periods when well, there was a big
difference to today. So, the last changes in this report were taken from this 2006
to 2015 period. And the extrapolation from this was basically, that in 2017 we
probably reached a 1 degree increase in temperature on a global scale. That's not
always the same, and in different areas it might be warmer and in different it's
colder, but that's the global increase. So. So this is where we are currently. So
we have an increase from 280 parts per million in CO2 to about 410 ppm. This is
changing. Its not constant, it's a bit going up and down but it's about 410
in 2019. We have a strong increase in temperature globally, but the biggest
increase is actually in the winter. It's in the Arctic. And there's a current
antrophogenic CO2 surplus of about 40 gigatons per year. So 40 gigatons - what's
that? That was actually current, this is already gone because we are now a bit
higher than that. But this was the average period from 2011 to 2017. OK. Now I go
directly into this IPCC report from last year. That's 2018. In chapter 2, there's
this table. I love this table. This table contains a lot of climate science because
it goes into how much actually can we further emit to reach which temperature
change. So this would be here the 1.5 degrees Celsius, this would be the 2
degrees Celsius. And then you have probabilities: how likely you can avoid
this, or is it going to come? So if you want to avoid it with a two sigma, that is
like a 67% probability to go over 1.5 degrees, we have 420 gigatons to emit
further additionally into the atmosphere. 420. As you remember, it's 40 gigatons per
year. And this was I think from last year. So this refers to basically 2017. So it's
already two years gone since then. And it has not decreased, but increased actually.
And then there is a lot of difference, you know, if you go for a 50 percent chance,
you can you can say, ok, it's a bit more we can emit. And if he goes, well, we just
want to have a one third chance, then we actually would have double the amount we
could emit. For 2 degrees Celsius. This is far more, so it's more than 1000 gigatons
of CO2 equivalents to emit. Now, there are, of course, a lot of uncertainties,
all kinds of uncertainties that go with that. And one is, for example, the so-
called Earth System Feedback. The earth itself responds to this emission and also
emits CO2 and also methane. And this has an also a long term impact. And then there
are further uncertainties. And these are I mean, this has been also part in the
previous talks that, of course, climate models do have uncertainties.
Nevertheless, if we take this into account and say, ok, we want to avoid 1.5 degrees
Celsius increase in temperature with a 2/3 probability. That they call "likely" in
this report. So it's likely that we are not exceeding 1.5 degrees. We have 420
gigatons surplus CO2 to emit into the atmosphere in total. 100 gigatons will be
more or less gobbled up by the earth response. This was in the report. Current
research shows that this is likely a bit too conservative. So it's probably more,
but, well. OK. So our emission is about 40 gigatons, so the planned CO2 emissions by
coal power plants that are running, was at that period 200 gigatons CO2. So they are
built. They are running. 200 gigatons by that. And then we have 100 to 150 further
gigatons for our planned coal power plants and those under construction. As we count
this together, we have already exceeded the 420 gigatons CO2. And this is, of
course, one reason why these coal power plants have to be shut down. But they're,
of course, not the only source. They are only one source of CO2 emissions we have
in the atmosphere. And to make this clear, what this means, this is what I go into
now. What does this mean? This difference from 1.5 degree to 2 degree, and that's
been a lot of research on that. OK? Now, the first one is, for example, on the
Arctic. I mean, there's been a lot of talks about ice bears and so on. But of
course, this is not the only thing to care about. It is quite crucial that there is
ice there also because the ice, we heard this before in the previous talks, that
the ice reflects the sun and the less reflection is there, the more warmth is
being taken up by the earth again. So we have like a feedback system there. Also,
of course, because of all the... It's not just the ice bear. There's like a whole
biosphere there. And this biosphere has to somehow survive. Now, the likeliness of an
ice free Arctic is this graph here of comparing 1.5 degrees - this is this one,
or these two studies, these are two studies here, one with the dotted line and
another one with the full line - and 2 degrees. And this is how likely it is in a
certain period of time that this happens. And so you can see, if we consider again
that it's likely, it's about 45 years it takes for a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase
that we have an ice free Arctic. So this is actually possible with this increase,
but it's like once every 45 years. If we go for a 2 degree increase, this one is
every 10, or, even with the other study, it's more like once every five years that
this is happening and this is quite frequent. And this, of course, causes
quite some impact on everything that lives there. Now, this is ice and Arctic.
There's not so many people living in the Arctic. So there's a lot of further
studies that have been done. And this, for example, for Africa I will only ...
because of limited time. I can do this talk for many hours, actually. I will only
go onto this example here. Extreme heat with record temperatures over close to 50
degrees and actually even increasing that. That has been there in 2009, 2010 in the
months from December to February in Africa. These are temperatures where
people cannot be outside anymore at these temperatures. It's just too hot. And then
it's showing these curves and these are probability density functions. So these
curves show how often, like, each of these balconies, I don't know, boxes here are
showing: How often does this happen? And so here we have "current", the current
status, that is the temperature from 2006 to 2015. That's what they call current. So
there is already this increase in temperature under these conditions. This
happens every well, maybe twice every 100 years. If we go for 1.5 degrees increase,
that's the blue line we can see: This is going to happen every more or less third
year. If we go for 2 degrees, this is going to happen even more often. So this
is for people living there, it's getting hard to live there. It's just the
temperature, only that. If we go for, for example, for Australia as an example, that
we have the same, it's always these curves, here are extreme warm
temperatures. Well, that's very easy. But in Australia, what's also important there,
it's the temperature of the water, because of the corals that live there. And hot
water leads to coral bleaching. So basically, the corals die. And this all,
of course, as we've seen, the temperature is not every year the same. But there was
this hot summer and an extreme coral bleaching here. Temperature situation here
in the summer, in 2012, 2013. And how often does this happen? And we can already
see here: This would be the natural. So this would be the pre-industrial curve
here, where this very warm temperatures hardly ever happen. While we can see here
already: This would be every third year currently, it would be every second year
in a 1.5 degrees scenario and probably two of three years in a 2 degrees scenario.
And this means, well, what this means I would go into later. This is an example
for Europe. well, how often things happen. I don't know if you do, but I always
remember that one, because I well, I was a lot outside during that period. There was
a very warm summer we had in 2003. And a lot of people died of that because of the
heat. I remember being in Cologne at the time and laying outside at 40 degrees and
I was ill and so I had 40 degrees. So outside 40 degrees was very warm. And so
naturally, this can happen. It could happen like once every hundred years.
Currently we have like a situation, well, this would be like every 4th year. And
this increases then to more than 59% of all the years at 2 degrees Celsius. So
we're gonna get hot summers. This is the prediction of this study here. Well, what
does this mean? Well, now I go back to the IPCC reports and the IPCC reports are very
diplomatic always. And so they have "reasons for concern". And we are all very
concerned. This sounds very nice, but of course, there's some background to this.
So they have. And in the summary of this IPCC report from 2018 are there five
reasons for concern. That's one: unique and threatened systems like corals, or
extreme weather events. And you can see that does make quite a difference from
now. And going to warmer temperatures, up here we have the 2 degrees. So you can see
between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees: That does make quite a difference. Distribution
of impacts. Basically, this means that those, who suffer most, have contributed
less. And that's, of course, bad because those who contributed most, well, don't
suffer as much. And then they won't change. And that's a problem. That's why
they're concerned on this one. Global aggregate impacts is basically money
impact. So how much does this cost in the end to to cope with the outcome of this?
And well, it costs billions of dollars in the end to have a difference between 1.5
and 2 degrees. Every year, just to cope with the impacts. And then we have large
scale singular events that could be something like de-icing of Greenland or
something like that. Well, when that's gone, it's just a singular event because
it's gone. This is very abstract. So they get a bit closer to that. So warm water
corals is basically they are having already a problem. Well, I will show this
later. Well, they expect about 90 percent will die off at 1.5 degrees. Well, they
will die out at 2 degrees. Most likely. Certain. And this is of course, this is
a... Well, it's important for nourishment and for people who live from the sea, from
whatever they fished out of the sea, because corals that's like the childhood
bed of a lot of fish. So we do get quite an impact in the end on fishery. This is
why this is so red. Mangroves also get an impact on that, there is about the same
story. So a lot of small fish grow up there. Well, the Arctic region is getting
increasing problems with the ice. Well, these are all kind. I will go into this
later. Coastal flooding will increase from 1.5 to 2 degrees. This is, well, flooding
and rivers and so on. Well, and we'll get some more heat related morbidity. Now,
there's been a new report this year on land use. And this has been even more into
this. Now, different scale. Please watch that. So the scale here, it's going up to
five degrees. And if you look for that, yeah, so it's a bit different. So the
lower ones, 1.5 and 2 degrees are in there. But problems they see is a dryland
scarcity and water scarcity in drylands. So that's desertification, a lot
of that. Soil erosion, which is related to that, vegetation loss is also related to
that. Yeah, I will come to this later. The wildfire damage, we can see that already
today. I mean, in the news every time. Now it's Australia and Chile. But before it
was was more California and so on. So this will go on. This is no coincidence that
this is happening. We have permafrost degradation. We have a tropical crop yield
decline. Crop yield is of course... That hurts because well, this leads, of course,
in the end to food instabilities. And we can see, it does make quite a difference
already between 1.5 and 2 degrees. But of course, it can get worse. And they... Also
they are more specific on that, what they mean with this. For example, in wildfire
damage, they expect an increase in fire weather season currently, over 50%
increase in the Mediterranean area if it gets above 2 degrees and well, if we go to
4 or 5 degrees, well, they expect, well, hundreds of million at least, or over 100
million people additionally exposed. In terms of food supply instabilities: Well,
what we already see is, well, we have like spikes in the food price. This is not so
important for us usually. But of course, for people in the world that don't have
much money and we still have almost it's not quite 1 billion people in the world,
that live off less than 2$ a day. For such people, this is, of course, quite
important. If we go closer to 2 degrees, they do expect periodic food shocks across
regions. So basically that. There will be situations where there will be no food
available anymore. If we go up to four or five degrees, this would lead to sustained
food supply distribution problems on a global scale. So this depends on of what
kind of scenario we are calculating. I will go into this later. One additional
thing is also to think off on that, we are not only talking about the temperature.
Also, the water of the oceans take up the CO2, they take up a lot of the CO2, that we
blow into the air. And this leads to an acidification. And so the pH value of the
oceans, they decrease and this has an impact on a lot of animals that build up
calcium carbonate, so shells basically. So all kinds of bi-valves, all kinds of like
cancers and all that, they depend on building up this calcium carbonate. And if
they're not able to do this anymore, of course, they don't grow anymore. And they
are pretty much in the beginning of this food supply, a food chain and the oceans.
Now, I was reading this 2018 report and somewhere there on page 223, I found them
this year, where they basically say, ok, we do have this impact and there is this
aragonite saturation, which is well, basically that's the point, where this
build up for specific animals is not possible anymore, at this saturation
point, because the chemical reaction does not work anymore. And this depends on the
temperature, this depends on the pressure. And the higher the pressure is, the
earlier this point is reached. Also, the colder the temperature is. And so this is
what you can see on the right hand side. They investigated this mainly from the
polar regions on. And so that they... at this point, where this point will reach the
surface of the ocean from 2030 onwards, so that they're all these animals on the
surface of the ocean are not building in the polar regions, will have problems to
build up, actually, their shells in. This has two different impacts, of course, one
impact, they don't grow anymore. This has a big issue on the food chain in the
oceans. The second impact is actually that these... This was a one off the carbon
sinks. They took CO2 and with calcium, they build up these shells and they die
off at some point and they sink to the ground. And well the CO2 is gone. Well, if
this is not happening anymore, of course, this type of carbon sink does not work
anymore. Okay. Now, I've talked about... These are further, I will go skip through
this quickly. These are all kinds of things that happen. So on this 1.5 degree
report, they compared for a lot of regions, what will happen. So for 1.5
degree warming or less, of 1.5 to 2 degrees and 2 to 3 degrees. And there's all kinds
of things. This is the big table in this report in chapter three. Read these
reports. Please read these reports. They're good! And they're actually
scientifically good. I mean, this in terms of if you do it. If you do science, it's
really really good. Because they have so many so much literature and so many cross
references and how they do it to be very sure to say, OK, this is what we can say
with this certainty. This is very, very good science. I think at least. OK. So I
will not go into all of this. But it has to all kinds of regions severe impacts
like south east, for South East Asia, for example, they have, you know, this risk of
increased flooding and they have increased precipitation events and, yes. And, well,
I think the most significant of this is the significant risk of crop yield
reductions, which is avoided, if we stay below 1.5 degrees. If we are not staying
below 1.5 degrees, they estimate 1/3 decline in per capita per crop production
per year, one third less food. That's not good! And if we go even higher, well, this
is getting worse. For small islands, well, there's actually the small islands are
well-known, of course, you know, there the sea level is rising, so they have a
problem. And actually the main problem they have is not that just the water is
going over the island, but that the salty water is rising and is intruding the fresh
water reserves they have. So they get a problem with fresh water. And well, this
is already a problem for them for 1.5 degrees, for two degrees, it's like a very
severe problem. And that's why they are pushing pushing so much for the 1.5
degrees change maximum. In the Mediterranean, this is very close to where
we are currently. So they expect a reduction of run-off water, so this is
rivers, of about 9 percent, it's very likely. Well there's range given, most of
the time they have this. So there is already a risk of water deficits at 1.5
degrees increase in temperature. If we increase further, we reach about... at up
to 2 degrees, we have about 17% less water in the rivers. This is, of course, not
good. I mean, I mean, especially I mean, okay, in Germany, for example, there's a
lot of food coming from Spain. And well, they do already have a problem with their
crops, with water for their crops. And this is getting worse. West Africa and
Sahel. Well, there is a prediction. Well, there's a prediction of, well, less
suitable land for maize production by 1.5 degrees already by 40% less land. 40%.
That's a lot. It's not the region where people already have a huge surplus in food
everyday. So there is an increase in risk for undernutrition already. For 1.5
degrees in. If we increase, well, this just getting absurd in a way, it says higher
risk undernutrition, of course, because it's going to get worse. Apart from this,
that it's too hot to go outside anyways. Well, for southern Africa, it's similar.
It's not as drastic. So there is already the high risk for undernutrition in
communities dependent on dryland especially. So savanna areas which are
rather dry. And this is getting worse again. Well, in the tropics, also, there
is a risk to tropical crop yields. We already heard that on the other side. On
the other side, it's also there, these extreme heat waves they're going to face.
So this is like this was a table and there was a lot of, well, details of what they
expect from 1.5 to 2 degrees. Now what scientists, scientists are a bit strange
sometimes because they are also then doing their science and they look at different
things. And one thing they are actually now worried about, and this is, actually
it is worrisome, very worrisome, is that actually, well, climate change has been
always there, because that's been like a cycle and this the so-called interglacial
cycle the earth has been going through. This has to do with the position to the
sun and a lot of feedback systems that kick in. If you cool the earth, you have
more ice build up, then you have more sun being reflected again. You have less
energy that stays on the surface of the earth and then it gets colder and colder
and colder up to a certain point where this changes again and goes back. And this
has been going on for hundreds of years. And the point is, now we've left the
cycle. And this is the part that's shown up here, that basically we are now on a
completely different trajectory. And that's the trajectory that is we're
heating this up and the Earth is responding. And it's also heating itself
up. And so we are on the path and it's not quite clear. So they built this. They show
this, this graph here, there is actually the possibility that the earth will go on
this path to heat itself up without us even. And this is called tipping points.
So there are several things that happen there. That is, for example, the melting
or thawing of the permafrost. There is methane hydrates in the ocean storage that
might be triggered to evolve. There will be a reduction of CO2 intake in the
oceans. Currently, a lot of CO2 is taken into the oceans, but this will get less
and less. the more saturation comes in there. We have a die-off of rainforests.
So. Well, last summer we've seen they have a lot of rainforest burning in the
Amazons. But this will also happen by the increase of temperature without human
impact. And in this paper here by Steffen and some others, they said they estimate
about a rainforest reduction of up to 40% by an increase of of up to 1.5 degrees
anyways. So we gonna lose rainforest, a lot of rainforest already like that. We
have a die-off in the boreal forest. This was this summer in Siberia. Well, they
just don't die off. They get burned. And there are other reasons why they die. And
so there's a lot of CO2 going to be emitted from forests that are where carbon
starts currently into the atmosphere. We have a reduction of ice and snow. So
there's less reflection of the sun into the atmosphere again. And we have a
reduction of ice warming, so we have an increase in sea level. And this whole
thing, this is like a communicating system. And one thing triggered, will
trigger something else. This is sometimes goes by circulations, also by ocean
circulation and so on. So one thing can trigger the next thing and this might
trigger the next thing and this will go on. And if this happens, at a certain
time, at a certain intensity, then we will not have as a human beings with the
current technology and technology we have, we will not be able to stop that. And
that's what they are worried about, so these climate scientists, that we should
not get these tipping points to go too strong. They are already...This is
already... These are processes that can be already seen, but... Well, currently they
are on a level where it's, well, it's bad. There was actually 4 weeks ago this paper
published in Nature Climate Change, where they said, well, we might be wrong with
our estimation here with this 100 gigatons, because these tipping points are
worse than we thought. So we are actually further there more on the upper limits of
the bounds where we thought it would be. Yes. So these are very worrisome
situations. Now, this should trigger us to do something about it, and that's actually
the point. So things need to be done. But up to now, well, things have not been
done. But this is like they see it, the climate, greenhouse gas emissions curves
from 1970 to 2010. And we can see that not only that the curve has been increasing
more or less the whole period, but also the increase has increased from 2000 on.
And the main increase here is by CO2. The other gas is here methane. There is a...
nitrogen gases up here. And well there are CO2 from well, agriculture, forestry and
land use, this is here. They are more or less constant. Sometimes there are spikes
like this. Most likely this is like rainforest burning. The only year in the
recent years where there has been a decrease also in the CO2 emissions was in
the economic crisis in 2008. Well, there actually was a decrease by 4 percent.
Yeah. Now, nevertheless, the scientists went on and said: OK, let's calculate, how
can we manage to get to 1.5 degrees and there are different scenarios. Some say,
OK, let's go to get to 1.5 degrees. Some say, OK, maybe we need to get to a higher
temperature and later on change that again to get to 1.5 degrees. So there are all
kinds of scenarios that you can calculate. Now, if we say, we use this CDR, this is
carbon dioxide removal. We don't have that. And we say, we use the exponential
curve each year. We do reduce this the same percentage of our emissions and we
want to get to 1.5 degrees. And this was the curve from 2018. So we should have
started this year to reduce our CO2 emission by 18% each year globally, 18%,
if we want to reach 1.5 degrees. If we want to be, we reach 2 degrees, it's still
5 percent each year. 5 percent. If we do this for Germany, by this, and I think
this is the most important figure. It's not as important like politicians always
say, are yeah, by this year, we want to reduce our emissions by 50 percent or
something like that. But this does not tell you what happens but 2030, what
happens until 2030? Right? So it's very important to keep in mind that it's likely
we have a budget and this is actually from a paper, it's global carbon budgets. They
say they publish each year, how much budget do we have left to to emit? And so
if we take this budget and say, OK, this is our budget. How are we gonna spend to
spend going to spend our carbon budget? And this is something that we should ask
all the politicians. What do you think is your budget? Why do you think this is your
budget? And there's been actually an article by by climate scientists Stefan
Ramsdorf in the Spiegel. Where he said, OK, let's estimate we have more than seven
point about seven point three gigatons CO2 overall budget to Germany. And we could
say if we want to reach one point five degrees, this would mean we continue our
share of emissions, which would be in Germany, which is like double the average
of the rest of the world. And we'd say, OK, we have the right to blow out in the
air twice as much as the average person in the world. Then we still would have 1.5
gigatons CO2 in Germany to emit. And how are we gonna do that? That's
the question. Are we do we have this in mind? Of course we can calculate this down
to each person in Germany. So we end up with about 40 tons per person. So each of
us can also think of this. I have 40 now, 90 tons here. Sorry, 90 tons. That is to
emit. How am I gonna spend this until the end of my life? Now, if we go back to this
report, then we have different scenarios. And as you can see, there are different
ways of doing that. And these are different economic scenarios. So and you
can see already, that most of these scenarios do have negative emissions at
some points. Actually, all of them have. Some of them include carbon capture and
storage here shown as BECCS. And depending on what kind of economic
scenario you go for, this is more or less. And here it's like up to about 20 gigatons
per year to be stored in the ground. The green part here, agriculture, forestry and
land use and other land use. This also, of course, you can reduce CO2 by planting
trees. This is actually a very efficient way of doing that. But of course, the land
land area is limited. And this is also true for other things. And of course, the
land area we can use is decreasing due to climate change. It could always should
always keep this in mind. Now. The base of all these scenarios, they put this again
into a table and and puts and I put some pictures to that. So they say: If we want
to reach to 1.5 degrees, what we have to do, we need a rapid and
profound near-term decarbonisation of our energy supply. So basically, we have to be
very, very quick and change our energy supply. This has to be. That's the first
part. The second part, we need greater mitigation efforts and the demand side. So
we have to use less and get smaller with things. Third part is well we do have to
do this within the next 10 years, so we cannot wait. This is very, very urgent.
Well, this is actually a table that looks like this is a bit, sorry for that. So the
main thing is that the additional reductions come from CO2 emissions because
the other greenhouse gas house gases are already included in the two degrees
scenarios. We need to invest differently, so investment patterns have to change
strongly. What we also, they are the best options actually for one point five degree
scenarios are the ones that go with the sustainable development, because if people
don't have food to eat, they don't have the chance to take care of the climate
anymore, because first they are trying to survive. So we do have to also care about
how people can live on this planet. This helps protecting the climate. Well, then
they say, OK, we probably have to think of climate, the carbon dioxide removal
somehow at the mit summit of the century. What's the myth of the centuries? So this
has to be implemented now. And what we also have to do is, we have to switch from
fossil fuels to electricity and the end user sector. Now CDR, carbon dioxide
dioxide removal, I will say about that. This is, of course, agriculture, forestry
and land use. That's very easy planting trees. Then there is BECK. So you use by
basically biomass to produce some some gas and then you capture the CO2 from burning
the gas and press this into ground and carbon capture and storage. Or what you can
also do is use direct air capture as where you use it. These are like these machines.
So they take CO2 from the air and then you have to store it. And you can see it's such
a machine here. This was like a model at the time. So these are these have been
already existing models. This. So basically this can be take 1000 tons of
CO2 per year. So if we want to go for gigatons, then we would have to build
millions of these in the end. Problem with that, it's a bit and discuss
also in this report. So. So basically. So we have an energy usage of that by
12.9 gigajoules per tonns CO2. So basically, if we want to use put down 15
tons of 15 gigatonnes of CO2 per year by this, which was in one of the scenarios, we
would need about 1/4 of the global energy supply only for atmospheric waste
management. It's called like this. And the funny thing, this was like a professor. We
had them in our university here in Oldenburg and he he gave this
presentation. He said, yeah, this sounds so crazy, but the climate change will hurt
you so much. This will be done. Yeah. And BECCs, that's a different way of doing
that with a bio gas. So the thing is, if we want to have that at large scale, it
requires huge amounts of land use to produce this amount of biogas. And the
other drawback is, of course, that you do have to take care of your storage systems
to avoid the gas to come out because. Well, CO2 is hard. Is has a higher density
than than oxygen. And it goes so, it stays on the ground, if there is no wind. And if
people live there, you don't have anything to breathe anymore. Now, there are, of
course, different sectors. This for the EU, for example, where where the
greenhouse gases come from. So the main parts are, of course, agriculture. There
is transport and the energy industry and this. But there's also other industries.
And it's important to keep in mind that this is not equal of all different
countries. But it is also distributed to a dependent strongly on on the income of the
people in the countries. So the high so- called high income countries here, they
have the highest share in the CO2 emissions by the MID. So so-called
emerging countries, they're almost at the same level now. While low income
countries. They mainly have a CO2 emissions here from agricultural land land
use. So the question is, can we make it to one point five degrees? That's a good
question. So there have been a lot of studies like. Like for Germany and the EU.
Either on like energy infrastructure, for example, or the whole system. There
was one study from this year. They looked for 95 percent CO2 reduction by 2050.
There was one study currently just read you released for the complete EU and
greenhouse gas neutral EU by 2050. And so obviously, technically there is this
assumption that this is possible. One main thing of that is, that we have to go far
more efficient. And one thing and that is use electricity, because electricity is
very efficient in many things. So currently the prime currently prime energy
consumption in Germany is about two thousand 3200 terawatt hours
in total. And the assumption for 2050 where they have this
100 percent or 95 percent reduction would be 1300 terawatt hours or by the other
study was even less than that. That depends a bit on the mixture they use. The
reason for that is, for example, that the efficiency, for example, of battery driven
cars is much higher than the one, those of combustion driven or other methods. So it
really depends on which technology you put into use on how good you get. On the EU
level, that looks a bit like this. So there demand and supply today. And this
would be, so the reduction is not quite as large, but that would be as they still
assume that we can reach this type of reduction if we want to. Nevertheless,
they are not assuming 100 percent CO2 free. But they calculate with negative
emissions by agriculture and forestry. So this is actually in these calculations and
I really like the one by Robinius and so on. That's the lower one because they
actually calculated completely with storage systems, with electricity grids
and all that and how much needs to be invested into this. This is a very
detailed study. Very, very good one. So this actually technically possible and
they even calculated this. What happens in the so-called "Dunkelflaute". That's the
German word for there is no wind and no sun in the winter for a period of time.
And what happens? And this can actually. And that's what all they assume is that we
do have a lot of storage for gas and we can use these curr, current strategic
storage, as for gas in the future to store power to to gas, gas or gas that's won by
electricity there as a backup. So basically, technically, this is possible.
So to conclude, so the climate system is already at a critical stage. The prospect
for a one point five degree warmer earth are already very bitter. And
while the IPCC reports and all the reports, they are they are they. All of
them go for it. If you would not exceed 2 degrees because we have this thing of the
tipping points. And several reasons we already have this two degrees. Yeah,
this carbon dioxide removal is presented. Basically, this is hard to avoid. But
there are these critical things concerning carbon capture and storage. And whatever
we need to do is we have to act fast, and that's the main thing. This has to be done
very quickly. And I must say I'm very sorry. But our government's. Well, yes...
*applause*
So it is not a technical issue. It is a political one. Yes.
Thank you.
*applause*
Herald: Bernhard, I thank you very much. We have eight minutes for questions. So we
have a couple of microhones here and the whole. Please line up over there. We have
those eight minutes. I'm sure there will be questions. The signal angel is
signaling over there, that we have a question from the Internet.
Question: Do you see nuclear power plants as a temporary solution to slow the
emission of CO2 and we had quite some discussion in the Internet. There was
number one answered. You need more than 10 years to build new nuclear power plants.
And the response was, well, you could we get the shutdown once back on the power
line. So is that the realistic scenario, in your view?
Bernhard: Well, there is actually this this is a current discussion going on. And
the issue with that is, it's not that easy to us to get old power plants back into
running. Because, well, they have a certain type of lifetime. And if you want to put
them back on into the into the system, then you somehow would have to exceed the
lifetime. And that are some, of course, some security issues. And if you want to
avoid them, then you have to put a lot of money and effort into getting them to run.
And you need also a lot of time to do that. And so this the question is, would
this be worth it? And I would say probably they are faster methods to do it. You
could do it. There are, of course, the risk and I mean after Fukushima and
Chernobyl. Basically, we we've all seen what the risks are. So and I would say
it's probably not the best and fastest way to do it. There are other ways they could
be worth doing it. Herald: OK. Then we're going to hop over
to microphone number one. Mic 1: First, I want to thank you for
your talk. It was very informative. And yeah, my question is as follows. There was
a talk at the university where I study in Darmstadt one and a half years ago from a
person who compared the IPCC predictions with what really happened with the real
temperature increase and the damage which causes the climate change. And what she
found out that the IPCC always, nearly always underestimated the effect of the
temperature increase and what it causes. Have you ever heard of this criticism and
do you think this is still the case? Bernhard: I hope not. The issue is, of
course, that the IPCC reports, as always, very, very carefully taking decisions and
is very carefully looking at this. And there are more conservative and the rather
are lower than the than the actual temperatures in the end, probably because
there is, of course, also a lot of pressure, political pressure on them. And
so if they would predict something and they would over predict, then people would
immediately say, come and say, hey, you are doing panicking and so on. And so
that's why it is most likely that they try to be as accurate as possible. But they
rather choose the lower the. The lower estimates.
Question: Yeah. That was the serious thing as well.
Bernhard: That's let's say it's a very it's a I mean in the end it's this summary
for policymakers. I showed some slides from that. That is actually voted on by
the buyer of governmental agents. So they bring this intergovernmental round of the
U.N. They are a U.N. entity. And so and the governments actually say you have to
approve this. And so that's why it's very, very diplomatic. And the terms of. So they
are doing reasons for concern, you know. So it's I mean, people are concerned about
all kinds of things. Thanks. Herald: All right, then we hope over to
microphone two, please. Mic 2: OK. First, thank you for your
talk. All good mood is gone now. And if it's mainly a political problem, do you
have any idea how we can force politicians to make the right decisions now? Because
what we are doing at the moment, like protesting and voting, doesn't seem to
work. Berhard: Well, I *some applause* I think
actually I'm very happy because I think protesting works, but it does not work in
the same way that people who usually take it to the streets think it works. It puts
a lot of pressure onto them. But it's one pressure on. They also have pressure from
other sites, you know, and then they look at, you know, what are the my voters. And
if their voters, are not the ones that are on the streets. Well, they might be not as
important. And so I think the main thing is that needs to be done is to go out to
the people. And thus going to the street is one way of doing that. And tell that,
you know, and talk to the people and talk especially to those who are not there on
the streets yet. Well, the potential voters of those who think, well, I don't
have to care so much about because these are not my voters. And we just have to go
out and talk. And I think this will put up the pressure together with taking it to
the streets and protesting and doing whatever talking to politicians. I mean,
we have a you know, Angela Merkel is our our chancellor in Germany, and she is a
physicist. I mean, she knows I mean, this is she understands all this. You know,
it's not that she doesn't know. It's just the pressure from the wrong side yet.
Herald: All right. And we have time for one last question. Microphone three,
please. Mic 3: Yes. Thank you very much for my
side, for the informative talk. From the description of the talk, I was expecting
more on the, it said something about the resilience, about climate skepticism. Yes.
To be more resilient about their arguments. And I was in discussion with
many other people, also climate skepticism and they sometimes said, they didn't
criticize the entropy eugenic. Well, they didn't criticize the climate change at
all. But the anthropogenic part of it. And what they said that there is like an
increase of solar activity the last decades, which increases to the
temperature. And that also like the diagram is like only from 1860. But if you
consider like the last millennials, there have been higher values of CO2 in the
atmosphere, but the temperature did not correlate. So how do you argue with this,
this kind of argument? Berhard: Yes, that's a good one. Yeah. I
didn't go into these these because they are the sometimes the easy ones. But the
thing is that there are... I did this talk this way because it helps. If you go into.
Climate, skeptics say this and they say a lot of different things. If I could do a
whole talk on what climate skeptics say. If you do that, then in the end, people
keep in mind, oh, yeah, this there is some skepticism on this. And this is, I did a
lot of these things because by this now people can go out and say, OK, this is
currently the state of the art of the research. I did not go into the climate
skeptic detailed answers. Of course there are. I mean, I can make, for example,
thunder radiation is already in the climate models, the changes in thunder
radiations. The variations of the centuries before actually being
precalculators in the climate models currently, because only if you're able to
run if you if you're able to mimic that in climate models today, for today, all of
the past. If you're able to do that, then you're able to do to run it for the
future. And this is how climate models work. And so all this, all these
variations are taking in. So I'm sorry. Herald: Oh, time is up.
Bernhard: But we can talk about this also later on. I didn't get too much to the
climate skeptics now. So much. Herald: All right. We don't have time for
any more questions, Bernard. *Applause* That's your Applaus, thank you very much.
*postroll music*
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