Dear viewer, these subtitles were generated by a machine via the service Trint and therefore are (very) buggy. If you are capable, please help us to create good quality subtitles: https://c3subtitles.de/talk/1421 Thanks!
The dire reality of the climate crisis.
Quick question, who among you was
in this year and 2019?
Who has been to a demonstration
against climate change?
At least one show hands like Fridays for
Future or something else?
I would say that's like ninety five
ninety seven percent of the audience.
Thank you very much.
And one of the Fridays
for Future demonstrations that I went to
was very impressive for me
because I felt that they had a very
interesting balance between the situation
is really, really bad and we were all
fact. And on the other hand, but it's not
too late, we can do something so people
are getting really scared, but also like
a constructive and motivated to
do something. So it's an emotional and
intellectual rollercoaster.
And in this talk, we're going to learn a
little bit more about what the scientists
say and if it's better to freak
out or be motivated.
And our speakers Hanno Beck.
He's an I.T.
security professional, and he writes
regularly for the media outlet column.
And with that, I leave you with him.
I hope you learn a lot.
Please give Hannah a big one round of
applause and have a lot of fun with this
talk. Thank you very much.
Yeah.
Hello. Um, yeah.
Uh, just adding to the introduction
like about this, should we be freaked out
and should we be motivated after
last time I gave such a talk.
Someone came to me and said, Yeah, if I
listen to you, it seems like this doesn't
make any sense and and uh,
we will lose anyway.
Which heavily influenced how I changed
the talk for this time.
So.
But you will see that.
So first, I want to show you this graph.
This is the worldwide CO2 emissions.
It's CO2 only their other
greenhouse gases.
But that's kind of the big issue.
And as you can see,
they're mostly growing.
And that's kind of the timeframe
in which we had something like
international climate policy.
Um, so
like, we knew there was a problem.
I mean, some of you were probably not
even born in 1990, but, uh,
humanity knew that there was a problem
and we just went on.
And so I call
this the chart of epic climate failure.
Um, but I
also want
to point out a few more specific things.
There kind of two points
where it goes down a little
bit like notably down
there, if you like that statistical
variation, but they are two points where
you can kind of see that emissions went
down.
Um, one of them is
when the Soviet Union collapsed and the
other one is the economic crisis in
2009.
Um, and
I show you a few more points here.
That is kind of important
events in international climate policy.
So we have the UN Earth
Summit in the early 90s, which
was basically the start of international
climate policy, the UNFCCC,
which is the UN body to organize
the climate conference since it was
founded there.
So there the world said,
Yeah, we have to do something about this.
And then there was the Kyoto Protocol,
which was, uh, praised as
the first international binding, which
was not technically true.
But uh, that's what they said.
Binding agreement to reduce greenhouse
gases, which you can see was very
successful just in the wrong direction.
Um, and
we have the Paris Agreement and just
went
on. Um, so
yeah.
So um, where are we?
Uh, we are currently at roughly
one degree of warming.
And I think one part
why we are discussing this now, why
this is the big topic here at the
Congress and why.
Uh, yeah,
the the topic is now part
of the mainstream discussion is that we
are actually seeing climate change.
So, um,
I am sure you remember, like right now,
it's really cold. But in the summer it
was really hot and we had several
heat records.
In Germany, we had several
instances where it was above 40 degrees,
which in the past just was
not a thing in Germany.
And you
right now have a lot of fires
in Australia
and also in Australia.
There were plenty of heat records in
the past couple of weeks
and is, of course, just two examples.
I mean, there are
many more um.
Yeah.
So what is politics
doing about this? So
you probably know that there's this Paris
agreement, which was agreed
upon by all the nations of the world in
2015.
And um,
so it's an international treaty where
all the nations in the world agreed to a
three degree of global heating.
Well, that's not what it's
written in it. It's probably also not
what you heard about it.
Um, but technically that's
what it is.
So, um,
in the text of the Paris Agreement, it
says, yeah, the
we want to limit the global
temperature rise to well below two
degrees Celsius
and
well below is.
Even then, it also says
we should be pursuing efforts to limit
the temperature increase to 1.5 degree.
We're currently at one degree.
So but the problem
is that there's not really any plan
how to do this.
So Paris Agreement is kind of
saying that's what we want,
but yeah, whatever.
Um, so
how this Paris agreement works?
Is there something that is called
nationally determined contributions,
which basically is
voluntary actions by nations so a nation
say, yeah, we have a plan to reduce
our greenhouse gas emissions.
That's what we commit to.
And erm,
if you
count them together.
And estimate what the outcome will be,
and this is an official U.N.
document, so it's not
from some, I don't know, radical climate
scientists. This is the U.N.
that this adds up to roughly three
point two degrees temperature rise.
Um, and and
that is if the nations commit
to what they said, which
usually they don't.
Yeah.
So so to
give you a bit of an idea, I mean, in the
climate discussion, there's often these
degree numbers and to get a bit
of an idea, like currently,
we're at one degree above what
it was before humanity started
emitting greenhouse gases.
Um, then the Paris Agreement
kind of says we should get
limited to at least two degrees, and
it would be better to limit it to 1.5
degrees.
But the actual Paris Agreement
commitments are around
three degrees.
Um, and if you have
a realistic view on current policy, it's
maybe more.
Um yeah.
So what is the science saying about this?
So um,
this this institution called the IPCC,
which is, um, international
science premium.
And they are they are.
They are not doing research themselves,
but they are creating a summary of
of the climate research.
So trying to to find the essence
of what the science figured out.
Um, and
the
so they create regular big reports,
but the last one is kind of outdated by
now. Um, and they published
a special report which gained quite
some attention, uh, in 2018.
And this was a direct reaction to
the Paris Agreement because
the Paris Agreement had this two degree,
1.5 degree.
And so they said, yeah, the scientists
should figure
out
what does it mean to a degree, 1.5
degree?
What's the difference?
And there were kind
of two main messages from this report.
One of it is that there's a big
difference between 1.5 degree and
two degree.
And the other message is that
1.5 degree is still doable
under some optimistic
assumptions.
So what does that mean, 1.5
degree or two degree?
Uh, so, uh, yes, a
nice picture of some coral reefs.
Um, unfortunately,
I have to tell you that in
the future there won't be any more such
pictures because soon they will all look
like this very likely.
Um, what
this report estimated is
that if you have 1.5 degree,
we
will probably lose at least 70 percent
of coral reefs worldwide.
Uh, if we have to degree you, basically
almost all the coral reefs will be lost
will be destroyed.
And I mean, currently, even to a degree,
seems ambitious.
Um, it
will happen much more often
that the Arctic will be ice free
for 1.5 degree.
This is estimated to be.
Uh, this is a switch.
Sorry, that's a mistake
for one 1.5 degree.
It's estimated every hundred years, and
for two degree, it's estimated every
ten years.
Um, then
it's expected that two degrees will mean
more sea level rise.
Um, it's
a relatively minor difference here.
But still, I mean, that matters for
foreign nations for every centimeter
means more area lost.
Um,
and
this I think this is one of the things
that,
um, that that
very
directly impacts humans.
The estimate of how many people will be
affected by extreme heat and extreme
heat can also mean something like you
cannot just go outside anymore
without any kind of
cooling support.
Uh, that this will be more than
doubled with two degrees Celsius
and all of us.
Keep in mind right now we're on a path
to three degrees. So yeah.
So what would be needed to achieve
1.5 degrees so the path
would be roughly reduce the
greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent
in the next ten years and,
uh,
come to a carbon neutral state
by roughly 2050?
Um, so
um but um,
lately there has been quite some
discussion is
the IPCC is telling us the full story
or if they are rather underestimating
some of the effects of climate change.
Um, so many scientists are
worried that the IPCC is too
conservative because like
they are kind of trying to create a
consensus of the
view of the scientific community.
And they also have a lot of pressure from
because I mean, you know that there are
basically, uh, nations
that we're the head of state deniers,
that climate change exists and
these people also find the IPCC.
So there's a lot of pressure from people
who basically don't believe in climate
change. And also, there's this consensus
view, which can lead to
that maybe more
important
outliers that they are not
viewed as much, even though you
probably should also have a look
at what the worst outcome would be.
Um, and
there has been, uh, kind of
meta study where some scientists
looked at IPCC predictions and compared
them to,
um, to
what actually happened.
And they came to the conclusion.
Yeah, the available evidence
suggests that scientists have in fact
been too conservative in their
projections of the impact of climate
change.
Uh, we suggest, therefore, that
scientists are biased not of US alarmism,
but rather the reverse to us cautious
estimates where we define caution as
erring on the side of less rather than
more alarming predictions.
And like recently, this has
been picked up by the New York Times,
where,
uh, they
had this article, which was a bit,
um, that's a
bit problematic because it kind
of had this like,
uh, somewhat populist
headline how the scientists got climate
change so wrong.
I mean, there were scientists who were
warning about this, and it's
been part of the process.
Um, but
also occasionally you can then read
headlines like this for its climate.
Models have accurately predicted global
heating study finds,
and
that
this was based on a study.
Or they came to the conclusion.
We find that climate models published
over the past five decades were generally
quite accurate in predicting global
warming in the years after publication.
Um, so
maybe
you find that confusing.
I also find these things occasionally
confusing. When I read climate
scientists, they were underestimating the
effects and then it's OK.
They were very accurate, actually,
but there's usually if you
dig down a bit, there's an explanation.
And the explanation here is
that actually, climate scientists have
probably underestimated the effects of
climate change,
but
their models on on temperature rise
have been very accurate.
Um yeah.
Sorry, the wrong slide.
Um, so
um, and I
mean, that can both be true, right?
So the uh, the prediction
on the average, well, mean
temperature has been very
accurate, but that's usually not
what we care about.
We care about things like storms, like
fires, like heating on,
like more local events, which directly
impact humans.
Um, and
if you're more interested in that, I
recently watched a very interesting
interview and this is on YouTube.
I have linked it here.
So, yeah,
um uh.
Yeah, then
you may be wondering like the climate
scientists are telling us, Yeah, we
need to act very fast to avoid
the worst outcomes of climate change.
But but we can still do it.
And maybe
you have heard something like that ten
years ago and you wonder, how is that
possible?
And
because like, as I kind of
said, the science did not get more
optimistic.
And uh,
the reason for that is that climate
scientists recently started adding
something called negative emissions into
their models, which means
they estimate that in the future, we will
be able to reverse emitting
CO2.
And
so most of these scenarios that
they are calculating where we achieve
to a degree or 1.5 degree, they are
estimating that that's what.
We will do in the future.
And so,
um.
So you may wonder, how can we do
negative emissions?
We can do things like planting trees
because a tree, when it grows,
it sucks in CO2 from the air
and that is turned into
what
that
is great. But it has very obvious
limits because the Earth has only a
finite amount of land
and
the the amount of land where we can
plant trees will probably
get smaller due to climate change because
we will have to a level of rice and we
will have more heat.
So we should plant trees
a lot.
But um, it's
there's only so much you can do here.
And so we need to talk about
something which is called carbon capture
and storage.
Um, the idea
here is that we get carbon dioxide
and then we started underground.
And originally
this um
entered the discussion in the context
of building nuclear power plants.
For example, in Germany, I remember
roughly ten years ago
I was living in cuts way back
then,
and there was a new coal fired
power plant built in College Square.
And some people were saying, Hey, isn't
that not so good for the climate?
And then some people said, Yeah, that's
no problem because we already plant in
the future to use cars on that plant.
That never happened,
but that's how they
said it then.
And this is not just happening
and what's not just happening in Germany
basically asks for coal or
gas plants that have largely been a
failure.
So today there's only a handful of
projects running and the
the impact, it's minimal.
So it's really small.
And the most of the projects
that are running are in the context
of something which is called enhanced oil
recovery.
And what they are doing there is they're
pumping CO2 into old
oilfields and can squeeze
a bit more oil out there.
Now you maybe get the idea that
that's maybe not the best thing for the
climate as well, because that means more
oil and
um. But in order to get to
negative emissions, we need to do
something different. And one way is you
could imagine doing bioenergy
like, for example, using biogas plants
or burning what and then
coupling that with CSS.
So I don't know if, for example, you
burn wood and then you capture the
emissions and then you store them on the
ground.
Now this obviously has all the problems
that you usually have with bioenergy.
That is, it
competes with with land
for food, and if
you use pesticides and
fertilizers that has the climate impact
as well. And if you plant,
I don't know, palm oil where there was
previously a rainforest and it is really
terrible for the climate.
So that's not a very good solution.
And basically the
the discussion is moving away from
that because people realized the
the effect of bioenergy are so
negative that it's probably not a good
idea
to do that.
Another thing you could do for negative
emissions, it's called direct air
capture, which means you run a big
machine that
sucks in air and extract the carbon
dioxide and then
you store that underground,
and
that technically works.
So there are a few startups working on
that.
But these machines
themselves will, of course, require a lot
of energy, and it is
questionable how realistic is
to scale that up to international
levels.
And I'll get later to actually
how much energy we are talking about
here. And obviously, the energy
that you use for that needs to
come from something like wind or solar,
because if you fire it by a coal-fired
power plant, that does not make any
sense.
I'm so,
so one criticism here is that the IPCC
and their optimistic scenarios
largely rely on technology
that does not really exist at scale,
like their test installations.
But uh yeah,
they
have very optimistic outlooks and how
fast this can be scaled up.
And even if the technology kind of works,
you one can wonder how this should
work economically and politically
because like for someone to
run a negative emission
plant, there's no profit
in that. So you would probably
have it. I don't know.
State funded. And then there's the
question of who pays
for that and why it why
should a country do that?
You have basically have the same problems
you have with climate policy,
with reducing emissions that yeah.
Um, so um,
another
issue with the science is, uh,
this discussion about so-called tipping
points and feedback loops, and
this is probably the most worrying
criticism of the current climate
science.
Um, so
um yeah.
Uh, so
we have a lot of feedback loops in the
Earth system, which is to
put it chart when we have warming,
and that causes even more bombing.
So an example for this is
when ice is melting because
um,
as you can see on this picture, ice
is very bright, but water
is very dark.
That means if are sunlight shining
on ice, then it's reflected a lot of
it.
And if the if the ice melts,
then the sunlight is shining on
the ocean.
And uh,
and that means less energy is reflected.
So this means if we have melting ice,
then we have more warming.
Following that,
this is called the albedo feedback loop.
Yeah.
Um, and
these tipping points
you call something a tipping point when
you have a system
that at some point
it will turn into
a process that something collapses.
And even if we stop
further emissions and
uh, one example for that where
where it's generally assumed by science
that this is already happening is the
West Antarctic ice field.
So the the
assumption is that even if we stop
emitting CO2 now or
and the planet is not getting any warmer,
that this ice field will completely,
completely melt down
and
that in the long run will mean,
uh, one to three meters of sea level rise
just by the West Antarctic ice field.
And there's probably more ice free or
said it that will melt.
And there's a
death risk that these
feedback loops and tipping points could
could cause a cascade where
some effects cause more warming.
That, uh, that brings
some other processes in motion and that
causes even more warming.
And um, there's been a study
in 2018 which is
kind of known as the hothouse Earth
study, where they looked at
at various of these tipping points that
feedback loops and how they interact.
And um,
they
came to the conclusion that even
with just two degrees of warming,
it may be that we end up in such a
scenario.
Now I want to add
some caveats here.
One is that there's significant
uncertainty. So when scientists say
this may happen with two degrees,
that doesn't mean they are sure about it.
That means they are worried that this
could happen.
And also, these are long
term effects. So we're talking here about
hundreds or thousands of years.
So this is not probably
not something you will experience
or I will experience.
So, yeah, what would need to happen?
Obviously, we need to stop burning
fossil fuels, right?
So we we
really need to get rid of something like
this. This is the general
idea. Open cast mine.
It's near the border to Poland.
Um, if
I recommend everyone that that
you go to one of these open cast
mines and look at it because it's really
kind of looks like a
nightmare scenario.
This one very close here in, uh,
it's roughly half an hour over
the train.
Uh, so I don't know, maybe if after
the Congress, you want to see an open
cast mine?
Um.
One kind of good news here
is that it's probably
much easier to build renewable energies
than we fought in the past.
Um, this
I really like this graph.
This is from a Dutch researcher
called OK Scott.
And what he did was
the black line is the
worldwide
installations of solar energy
and the
colorful lines.
Here are the predictions of the
International Energy Agency.
So what you can see here, like the
International Energy Agency, kind of
all of this assumes that solar power is
more or less flat, even though
it's growing exponentially.
And they they noticed that their
starting point, they have to move that,
but they don't really seem to notice that
they are not getting a trend here.
Um, so
and that also means, like a lot of people
are relying on these, uh, reports
from the International Energy Agency.
Uh, so
we can probably be more optimistic
about the outlook of renewable energy
than what is usually assumed by
governments.
Um, so so
what?
Usually the big plan is for for,
uh, reducing greenhouse gases is,
yeah, we should switch to carbon free
electricity and
then we should use electricity for
everything.
Um, so
um,
just that you get a bit of an area that
is how worldwide electricity production
is. The big thing is coal.
Um, the green
thing and the blue thing that is
renewable energy.
Hydro is the biggest one because the
natural humanity has been using
for a long time.
But the green thing is growing rapidly.
And I mean, I can easily
imagine that we managed to solve this
and get the green thing to cover
everything with the growth rates we
currently have in renewable energy.
Um, but what worries
me a bit is thinking about how much
electricity we will need in the end.
And just to give you some numbers
we currently have, uh, roughly
twenty six hours per year,
uh,
worldwide electricity
production.
And that is only a small share
of overall energy production that
is 160 out
of
which includes everything from heating
and cars and airplanes
and industry.
So somehow, we need to turn all
of that into renewable energy,
electricity use.
Um, it will
get more efficient in some sense.
Some situations, for example, an electric
car is more efficient than, uh,
gas powered car.
But but still, this is a lot.
And then there are things like if we want
to turn the petrochemical industry so
plastics chemicals
into, uh, use renewable
energy for that.
We can do this by using something
called carbon capture and use are also
called politics.
There was a talk on that on the camp.
If you want to watch that.
That was very good.
But there's been a study that if we
want to turn the current petrochemical
industry, uh, use
renewable energy for that, it would be
something between 18 and 32
hours per year.
So that is kind of where we
would need all the electricity we have
today worldwide.
Uh, like
double that just to replace the
petrochemical industry.
And we talked earlier about these
negative emissions.
This is a number from the IPCC report
where they estimated that we might need
43 Petworth hours per year
by 2100 just
for negative emissions, just to
remove the CO2 that's already in the
atmosphere and that's causing harm.
And like in a talk here
two days ago by a scientist, he said,
Yeah, that sounds crazy, but we will do
that because climate change will be so
bad.
So, so
looking at that, I mean, you can easily
see we will probably not just
need the electricity we generate today
and make that clean electricity,
but probably multiple times that.
And I
wish it all that electricity came from.
I have a hard time imagining that.
I mean,
the good news is renewable energy is not
really limited. We have.
If you think about putting solar plants
in the desert or using offshore
wind energy, there's plenty of space.
But it's obvious that
this is really, really challenging.
So, um,
and we're not just talking about energy.
There are some things that are even
harder. So
this is a cement plant.
Who knows how cement is made?
A few.
Yeah.
So what to do when you make cement
is you're you're using
limestone, which is mostly
calcium carbonate, and then
you burn it with a lot of
heat. And then what you get out is
calcium oxide and CO2.
So, um,
so
the the thing in this formula is
that you can see their CO2 on the right
side.
And that is part of the chemistry
that does not come from the energy we
need to make cement, but the chemistry
to make cement emits CO2.
And there's not really
any technology to
avoid that, except using
something like CFCs.
And this alone, this cement emissions,
the chemical cement emissions
that is five percent of the worldwide
carbon dioxide emissions.
So the only plan really to do something
about it would be either using CSS or
using these direct air
capture plants to later get the emissions
back out of the air.
Um yeah.
Then here's another uh,
not a technology, but something that
humans do with that they keep cows.
Um, Carlos also caused emissions
methane.
Um, and
it is um.
Overall, emissions from livestock is
roughly 15 percent of the worldwide
greenhouse gas emissions.
And also for that, there's not
really a solution.
I mean, you can replace parts of it,
like running a tractor on on
electricity.
But these methane emissions, there's not
really a solution.
So maybe the solution is this this
is the impossible
burger
I read yesterday in a big German news
publications that they are unhealthy,
which is obviously like, you're missing
the point. That's not what this is about.
Um, I don't eat
these things, but I really hope that
this is becoming successful because we
need to do something about that.
Um, so
maybe my point here is because very often
environmentalists tend to say, Yeah, we
have all of the solutions and we just
have to do it.
I would say, yeah, we have the solutions,
but this is not going to be easy.
And then there's this
thing called geo engineering,
so geo engineering
is where when you wonder, like,
can we do something to impact the climate
system where we counteract the
warming from the greenhouse effect?
And the most
plausible thing here is something that is
just called solar radiation management,
where you're trying to reflect
more sunlight from the Earth.
And
one way to do that is to put aerosols
into the atmosphere, which
is
kind
of understood how this works because
volcanoes also do that.
So if there's a big kokanee eruption,
this will temporarily cause a cooling
effect on the Earth because these
aerosols in the atmosphere reflect more
sunlight.
And
this is currently not widely discussed.
So. And the IPCC, for example,
explicitly excludes this from their
scenarios.
One reason for that is that,
uh, yeah.
But uh, I get to uh,
so usually you would
say, yeah, like blasting plenty
of chemicals into the atmosphere.
It sounds like a pretty crazy idea.
But on the other hand, if we're talking
about a situation where we have a planet
where large parts become uninhabitable,
then
probably we will have to need
to have a discussion about this.
Um, and
but
the big issue here is basically that some
people may think, Yeah, OK, we
have this geoengineering.
We can just blast few chemicals
into the atmosphere and then we can go on
like we do, which is not really
plausible. But some people
get this idea. And and that is also one
of the reasons why climate
scientists are not
really happy discussing that, which I
don't think is a good outcome.
I think we should discuss that.
I'm not saying we should do that, but I
think we should discuss whether that
would be a reasonable thing to do or
not.
Yeah.
I think one issue is that there are a lot
of very wrong ideas about the
climate problem circulating
in the population, so
um,
I found this interesting there.
There was a survey where there
are people from Germany were asked
what they think is the most effective
thing to reduce their personal
carbon dioxide emissions.
And the thing that was named most
was avoiding plastic bags,
which is like it has a really small
impact like compared to one
flight or whatever.
And this is basically nothing.
Um, and
like this was completely disconnected
from the real impacts.
So people have completely wrong ideas,
what matters and what doesn't matter.
And this came to the conclusion that
like excessively over estimated loss,
avoiding plastic bags and also regional
food and excessively underestimated
was eating meat, which has a relatively
high impact that people don't like to
hear that.
Um, and
then I think, uh,
something which I would like to frame
as efficiency is a lie.
Um, there's this naive
idea that if we have technology
that's more efficient,
that's a really good thing, because then
we will use less energy and less
emissions.
Um, but this
is usually not what is happening.
And I want to show you this.
This is a car,
an old car
from, I don't know, 80s 90s
folks, fog and golf and
modern folks fighting car.
And um,
the modern car is twice
as heavy and it needs roughly
the same amount of fuel.
So, I mean, that's really, really
efficient.
Isn't that great?
Um, so I mean, that's
an amazing increase.
We doubled the efficiency,
but it's just not helping the climate
strike, right? We if we have
cars twice as large and you know
that that is kind of becoming the new
norm right now.
Um yeah.
And we have more cars as well.
Here's another nice graph.
This is from the Lufthansa sustainability
report, where they say what they
what nice things they are doing to to
become more green.
And here they are saying that they're
decoupling the transport
performance and fuel consumption, which
I think is not really what the what the
coupling means, but
what they are saying. Yes, yeah.
Look, oh, we're uh,
they we we're transporting more people.
And I mean, OK, our fuel consumption
goes up, but it doesn't go up as
fast as
this kind of trivial.
I mean, you assume that technology gets
better. You don't assume technology gets
worse. But still, this is not
helping like the emissions
are still going up.
And this is discussed under
many different names.
One is the Jevons paradox, where
a researcher back in
very early times figured out that even
though the use of coal got more
efficient, but then people were using
more coal and not less, and it's
also named the rebound effect.
And I think this should be core in
basically every discussion about solving
climate change with technology, but
it's often just ignored
and the messages like efficiency.
I mean, I'm not saying efficiency is bad,
but the thing is efficiency does
not automatically reduce emissions.
And it may even increase them in
some situations.
And
some people, I mean, if you follow the
political debate in Germany, then
there are some parties who are saying,
Yeah, we should solve the climate problem
with innovation and technology.
And like, I'm not against technology
completely, not I think we need
technology, but.
But I think it's simply not plausible to
assume that by innovation and
technology alone, we will solve this
problem, or we even we will have any
meaningful impact.
Yeah.
So situation
is not, uh,
not not very optimistic.
Um.
But um,
as I said earlier, after my last talk,
someone came and said, This sounds like
there's nothing we can do and it's all
fucked anyway.
And if you
feel sometimes there's a thin line
between saying how bad it is and then
saying something which is not really
supported by the facts.
And um,
there was this article who has read this
have you?
So this uh, this was in the
New York magazine from a journalist
called David Wallace-Wells,
which was painting a very dire picture
of what what the effects of climate
change will be.
And he also wrote a book later on that,
uh,
this article was based on something
called RCP 8.5.
And this is one of the um, climate
scenarios from the last IPCC
report.
Um, so this is the the
worst emissions
scenario in the last
IPCC report.
Um, and
sometimes this is referred to as business
as usual scenario.
Uh, where the assumption is emissions
just keep growing.
Um, and
this scenario assumes that
by 2100, we will use roughly
six or seven times the amount of coal
that we do today and how
they come to these high numbers.
It's not just the normal growth, but
also they assume that at some point
maybe oil will become more scarce
and then we will start turning coal into
oil.
Well, this is technically possible, but.
I mean, this scenario, it's not
something that is impossible,
but
it looks rather unlikely.
And I think it's not.
If you talk about something like this,
you should put it into perspective and
not painting it as this is the likely
outcome.
And these discussions
about this RCP 8.5
led to recently, some scientists did
a calculation where they took the
current prediction from the International
Energy Agency, which, as I said earlier,
are not exactly optimistic about
renewable energy and ended up
with that.
This would probably lead to something
like three degree by the end of the
century, but
with a big uncertainty range.
Uh, so this this could also be up to
four point forty three if we are,
if the effects are more severe
than we currently assume.
Um, so,
uh, so uh,
what kind of like I?
The thing is, I find this really tricky.
How to say like this is implausible,
but I really don't want to downplay the
risks so well.
So the kind of take away here is there
are some extreme scenarios that
are rather unlikely.
But even if you take a plausible
scenario, that could lead to
really, really bad outcomes.
Um. And also one thing that is often
making these things confusing is that
most of these scenarios they look at,
they end 2100.
But of course, the world does not end at
2100.
And when we have these discussions about
tipping points, we're usually talking
about much more long term things.
Then this made a bit of
a buzz
on Twitter lately, so there was a report
by the International Monetary Fund
where it's had this sentence describe
an agreement between economists and
scientists that the risks are material
and the risks of catastrophic and
irreversible disaster is rising
so far. Not surprising, but then it's
um,
potentially infinite costs of unmitigated
climate change, including in the extreme
human extinction, which
sounds like quite a severe claim.
And some people were like, like, why is
the media not reporting on this?
And. But I looked into it
and I was not super convinced like they
see this. One source cited, which
was from 2009, which is also
not. It's a bit old, but and
I looked into what kind of study is that?
And this was a study published in an
economics journal,
and
it was kind of
modeling what
it would mean when you try
to find an economically optimal path.
And when you have a risk, that's not very
likely, but very extreme.
But it was not really saying anything
about the question of human extinction.
So I felt it
was not really justified to have that
sentence there. And I yeah.
And like, I really don't want to be
dismissive about these extreme scenarios
because like,
honestly, what three or four degrees
Celsius means, it's really hard
to predict. And I would not say
that we can confidently rule out that
this will mean something like human
extinction in the long run.
But but whenever I read something like
this, I try to look up the sources and
very often not much of
substance comes up.
Um yeah.
Does anyone know this guy?
OK, so you're not around
on the crank sites of the internet,
and so this guy is called Guy
McPherson, and he thinks
climate change will kill us all within
the next decades, the least latest
and there's nothing we can do about it.
The good news is this is not supported by
the science.
There's also a web page called Arctic
News, which is kind of in the same realm.
This this report is the blog
written by someone called some Karana,
which is probably a pseudonym.
And he has some theories here
where he says, Yeah, maybe we have a
warming of 10 degrees by
2021.
We will see.
Probably not.
He also has a plan how to stop that, so
he's more optimistic than the other guy.
But yeah, um
yeah.
Um, one of the
theories that a lot of this is based on
this is something called
the methane clathrin pump.
So methane two threats are
are also methane hydrate hydrates
that is frozen methane that is on the
bottom of the ocean.
And the idea
there is that if this all suddenly
melts
and uh and divides into
the atmosphere, that this could cause a
sudden climate change where we have very
extreme effects in a very short term.
There have been a few scientific papers
about that, but it is generally
believed that this is simply
from the physics not possible.
Um, so um,
to be clear, these these methane?
OK, left right.
This is a real concern, but this
is a long term concern.
This is one of the feedback loops I was
talking about earlier.
Um, but
this
is not it's not plausible
that these scenarios, that something like
that will happen in a very short
timeframe.
And and so these these if
you have these doomsday predictions, they
are usually a mixture of using something
very speculative and saying that
this is what's going to happen or
massively overstating some effects and
also very often confusing long term
and short term effects.
Now you could say, OK, this is
ridiculous.
There are a lot of cranks in the
internet, say all kinds of weird things,
but
some of these things are going into the
mainstream. So there was a paper called
deep adaptation. Has anyone read that?
Oh, a few.
And this got a lot of media attention.
There was this article on why is I think
this made it kind of famous.
The climate change paper so depressing
is sending people to therapy.
Uh huh..
It was rejected by a scientific
publication due to poor quality,
and it was heavily citing the
people. I just showed you earlier that
are having these crank theories
about very short term climate effects.
And there was also this article.
I have to hurry up a bit
in The New Yorker, where someone was
arguing that the we're
at a point where there's nothing we can
do anymore.
Uh, where he
he said, uh, the consensus among
scientists and policymakers is that we'll
pass this point of no return if the
global mean temperature rises by
more than two degrees Celsius.
This is not true.
Um, I know where it is coming
from.
There are scientists who are saying they
are worried that with two degrees,
something like that might happen,
but saying that
you think something might happen,
it's very different from saying there's a
consensus between the scientists.
So,
yeah, so
and the thing is like, I think
for one these predictions,
I want to say things that are correct,
right? So so I
trust in the spirit of science,
but also I think these predictions
are problematic because you
can come to this conclusion that that it
doesn't matter. It's too late to do
anything about it
and that
life in a strange situation where by
through very different arguments, you can
come to the conclusion that
either there are people who are saying,
Yeah, climate change is hoax, it's not
happening anyway or it's not happening,
not caused by humans or it's a good
thing.
Or on the other hand, you will have
people that say there's nothing we can do
about it and you come to the same
conclusion. No change is needed.
And like
climate change is not a yes or no thing.
It's not a binary thing.
It's um, we
cannot avoid climate change.
It's already happening.
But this,
it's there.
There's almost no imaginable scenario
where we're reducing emissions now.
It's not on the long run, improving the
situation.
Um, so
with this this idea that with these
these tipping points and feedback loops,
we will have this one point really
if it doesn't matter anymore.
But this
is not true. So
if you remember many of these feedback
effects, this will happen over a
very long time, particularly melting
of the ice sheets.
These are effects unfolding over
thousands of years.
And
even if you imagine a scenario where
humanity needs to evacuate large
areas due to sea level rise and lead,
which obviously will be terrible
but
are, imagine that we need to discuss
how about geoengineering or negative
emissions and deploy these technologies?
Uh, it it will almost
certainly make a difference if we have
several decades for this or several
centuries.
Um yeah.
So in summary, yeah,
the the situation is really bad,
but but still, it absolutely matters what
we do about it.
So, yeah,
um,
so for the new year, I ask
you to think about what you can do to
stop this.
Yeah, thanks.
Great, thank you very much.
You actually landed on point.
Yeah. So that also means, unfortunately,
that we do not have time for questions
and answers.