A new way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere | Jennifer Wilcox

Our planet has a carbon problem -- if we don't start removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, we'll grow hotter, faster. Chemical engineer Jennifer Wilcox previews some amazing technology to scrub carbon from the air, using chemical reactions that capture and reuse CO2 in much the same way trees do ... but at a vast scale. This detailed talk reviews both the promise and the pitfalls.
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[@bykerdellic]

almost 700kg co2 per acre, thats what hemp uses to grow, make hempcrete with the cellulose hurls and build houses with it sequestering the co2 for 100 years, use the seed for food(the most compatible vegetable protein for the human metabolism known) cannabinoids for medicine ...just sayin ..

[@blahbleh5671]

U SUR R A GENIUS

[@akay8734]

Great!!!

[@pooljunki1]

Exactly

[@scottbaxendale323]

I’ve been saying the same thing for years.

[@richdiana3663]

But da gubermint says you all will get high on the hemp and become frog people. Trust authority.

[@Wemdiculous]

Why are we even trying to take diluted CO2 out of the atmosphere when there are so many power plants that have concentrated CO2 we could go after first. Concentrated CO2 is much easier to remove.

[@midnight8341]

But with that we can only store the CO2 we put out, which isn't enough. We need to take the CO2 out of the atmosphere that we already put there to go back to the state we want to be in, so we need to work with the diluted CO2.

[@midnight8341]

@Роман Мавроян we should do both. It is absolutely neccessary to deal with the source of the problem, but that's not enough! The concentration that's already in the atmosphere is higher than we'd like to have, so we have to build the infrastructure to take it out NOW, or else we won't have it to start when we reach zero emissions to turn them negative. That would take too long. We need to build both systems at once.

[@xxmountaindewxx7893]

@@midnight8341 But what if we just burn wood, because it apsorbed CO2 before

[@midnight8341]

@@xxmountaindewxx7893 that isn't possible because there are not enough trees in the world to fuel the energy needs for 21. century humanity

[@MartinA-kp8xg]

Co2 need not be taken out anyway. How dare she attempt to justify stealing it from our air. Plants have evolved to best grow when levels of co2 are double what they are today, this is why grower pump it into greenhouses at 1100ppm, the current atmosphere is 410ppm. What she wants is funding to take out the carbon, and then to be able to sell it to commercial growers that produce our food. I have a much better idea leave it in the air to help the plants that grow outside. There are to many scams like this one, trying to make money off fake global warming. Pollution, pesticides plastics are different from carbon. We breath out 100 time the carbon that we breath in. A tipical bedroom at night might have 2500ppm of carbon just from our breath. This whole hysteria is fake nonsense to make people rich.

[@ikm64]

There are currently hundreds if not thousands of ways to extract CO2 from the planet. So that's not the problem, the problem is all of them cost money, turn that problem on its head and make actually make money, now you've solved the problem. Understand the problem is the first thing to get to grips with.

[@ThekiBoran]

Atmospheric CO2 is not a problem.

[@ThekiBoran]

@juscurious The corruption is what you say and more. I look at the CO2 scare, cultural marxism, the wars, the genocides, the dumbing down of education, the consolidation of the national News media, all of it, is working towards one goal, global government.

[@randomaxe662]

@@ThekiBoran Right, the problem is everyone and everything else you can name except the fossil fuel industry which wants to keep making a buck until everyone is dead.

[@helbrassen4576]

Funny Joke.

[@samo6401]

America doesnt have so much money, it has so much debt. Its not just sitting around for us to use, its loaned, through bonds. The failing tax system doesnt nearly provide enough money to sustain the massively inefficient systems the goverment places to meet the demands of voters. No, the original commenter is onto something. If you want a solution thats actually implementable, it needs to be cheap and it needs to produce something thats profitable at the end. No one wants another cash sink.

[@richardschaeffer3204]

Plant a tree. 1 Tree can absorb 6 tons of CO2 per year & it doesn't require electricity... Co2 is plant food

[@frogsoda]

You can't get as big of a government grant for planting trees

[@thatonedog819]

Protect prairies and oceans. They are larger carbon sinks than forests

[@Th3_Gael]

@@gregbrown1311 plankton and algae are great but contribute to Co2 when they decompose or get eaten. There is no free dinner, we need Co2 capture both natural and man made

[@riccardopusceddu6232]

@@gregbrown1311 Maybe his point should be that if you don't cut down trees and let them decompose slowly on the forest floor, they don't turn into CO2 so fast and actually can stay within the soil structure for centuries.

[@georgemargaris]

tree requires other things though, water and lots and lots of space

[@teebosaurusyou]

It would be far simpler and cheaper to preserve the rain forests. They already exist and are great consumers of CO2.

[@LilyZayli]

I agree. Sadly Brazil and the Philippines aren't just going to ignore that readily available farmland at their front door and the money that can be made from the timber. We must protect the rain forests as they contain the richest diversity of life in the world and provide sustenance and clean air to the rest of the world and like you say, it wouldn't cost money to just let them thrive.

[@gnognog7103]

A forest emits as much CO2 as it consumes. Only new forests would help. But they need too much space. You are right that it is a good idea to preserve the rainforest to capture C (carbon).

[@yarodin]

As she said, we need all the help we can get: preserve the rain forests, reforestation and afforestation. But if we actually want to reduce the overall CO2 levels in the atmosphere _fast_, we need more than that.

[@Half_Finis]

rainforests emit alot of co2 too, boreal forests are what we should be looking at

[@blahblah2062]

@@yarodin We do not need to do it at all. You have fallen for it. See Dr Patrick Moore or any of the 30,000 scientists who have signed a petition about this. C02 is the basis of life. Its not poisonous. Its used to preserve food. Its used in some keyhole surgery, Its used in greenhouses. We cannot be without it. Clean up everything else, but you are all wasting time on C02. only 0.4% in atmosphere, your brigade has sums wrong.

[@elijahragland8498]

if the whole world just pitched in to build enough alternative power sources, we’d massively lower the cost of energy AND virtually end reliance of fossile fuel and natural gas.

[@johannesswillery7855]

And millions would starve.

[@brownerjerry174]

@@johannesswillery7855 how?

[@tomcochran6616]

If it was cheaper to use alternative sources they would use it now. Also they are not reliable.

[@empresasarrinc.3440]

The modern society needs gas and fosil fuel to survive whit out them million of people starve to death

[@feranmike1052]

Elon musk brought me here

[@nyekijudit6272]

Me too 🤣

[@snakedike]

I've not been sure what to believe with respect to CO2 since this whole thing started. Of late I've started reading and watching more scientific content. And I've learned some interesting and potent facts that are not being discussed in the mainstream. And while they are reported on, they don't get the headlines and generally have disclaimers assigned to them which seems odd given observations supporting anthropogenic warming never do. First is that the earth is greening. Over the past 35 years the earth has added enough leaf content to nearly equal the surface are of the continental United States, twice. It is estimated that over 70% of this is due to the increase in CO2. Although we are sitting at 400ppm right now, green house growers find the optimal percentage of CO2 is somewhere between 1000 and 2000ppm. And while I'm not advocating this, the evidence suggest more C02 would result in an increasingly productive ecosystem. The second fact which I've checked with independent sources is that the ability for CO2 to act as green house gas will diminish with increasing quantity. It will need to accumulate logarithmically from the current level to maintain the warming rate. It's been estimated that it will not be able to contribute more than a .25 degree even with much higher quantities. If these things are true, I don't want to remove CO2. If someone asked me if I'd be willing to take a browner earth for more temperate weather I'd never say yes. But I would agree to stronger weather if it left the planet greener and capable of sustaining more robust ecosystems. Still not sure and still learning but facts are fun.

[@davidyeates8381]

You have raised a good point. The so-called greenhouse gases have maintained the Earth’s temperature at an average of 16C to sustain life as we know it. There is a case for renewable energy but if we interfere with nature we do so at our own peril.

[@orionbetelgeuse1937]

At the beginning she just said that the CO2 is a trace gas with the concentration of 0.04%, that's just a little more than twice the concentration of the neon gas in the air.

[@fakenoobyup5492]

Plant More Trees !

[@useroffline9999]

And get house plants

[@donniezoller8451]

@@alegriart And now it's on fire.😟

[@asmazanilla9517]

Wow, for once a perfect simple text!

[@skonstas4683]

So let us play along as if the whole theory was right and that humans need to produce less carbon dioxide. But producing less CO2 is no longer enough according to some scientists. So we need to reduce it. CO2 levels in the atmosphere have reached 400 parts per million, when compared to around 300 ppm in other decades. The fact is, we also need to figure out how to remove some of the CO2 that’s already out there. As a short-term solution, a young passionate child climate activist Greta Thunberg suggests we plant more trees. It’s a lovely idea. Who doesn't like trees? While R&D labs struggle to come up with viable carbon-capture technologies, we already have this “magic machine,” as her video says, that “sucks carbon out of the air, cost very little, and builds itself.” And we don't need to wait for craven politicians to get on board. I really want to believe in this. What if every person on Earth took it upon themselves to plant a tree. One treetop per child. Just how much carbon dioxide could we hope to scrub out of the atmosphere? Would it help reverse climate change? Let’s do the math! Carbon Content of a Tree I’m going to walk through a rough estimation. This is a good way to approach policy questions on a first cut; if the results are promising, you can always loop back and do a more sophisticated analysis. So to start, let’s figure out how much carbon a single tree can hold. Imagine a generic tree. Since I live in Quebec, I’m picturing a pine (though we have some other species as well). The pine is nice because it has a tractable shape-it's basically just a long skinny cylinder (ignoring the branches). I’ll say it has a diameter (d) of 1.5 meters and a height (h) of 15 meters. I can just plug those values into the formula for the volume of a cylinder to get the amount of wood my tree contains. This gives me 106 cubic meters of wood. To convert this to mass, I’m going to assume a wood density (ρ) of 500 kilograms per cubic meter, which is half the density of water. The mass of my generic tree would then be: Mass equals rho times volume, which equals rho times the product of pie distance squared and height all divided by 4. That works out to 53,000 kilograms per tree. But how much of that is carbon? Trees are made of many different elements, like hydrogen and nitrogen, but let’s say it’s about half carbon. At least that's an estimate that agrees with Wikipedia. So the mass of carbon would be 0.5 times the mass of the tree, or 26,500 kg. Simple! Counting Up the Atoms So far so good. But to talk about atmospheric concentration, what we really need to know is the number of carbon dioxide molecules eliminated. Since each CO2 molecule contains one carbon atom, I need to convert the carbon mass of a tree to numbers. This is where Avogadro's number comes into play, with a value of around 6.022 x 1023 particles per mole. And one mole of carbon has a mass of about 12 grams. That gives us the number of carbon atoms (n) per tree: Then, since everybody plants a tree, and assuming they’re all the same, the total amount of captured carbon atoms (N) would just be that number times 7.5 billion, the population of Earth. We're not done yet. We still need to find out how this changes the total concentration of CO2 in the air. For that, we need to estimate the total mass of Earth's atmosphere .... well, that’s kind of daunting. What do physicists do in such situations? We Google it. I get a value of 5 x 1018 kilograms (from Wikipedia). So, to find the concentration in ppm, I need the molar mass of air. Air is 99 percent nitrogen and oxygen; a weighted average of their masses gives an air molar mass of 28.97 grams per mole. With that, I can calculate the number of air molecules. This uses the same formula as above for n, so I just built it into my computation code. The Grand Result Starting CO2 Concentration = 400 ppm CO2 with 1 Tree per Person = 376.003 ppm Damn. That sucks. Even with 7.5 BILLION trees, it makes only a tiny dent in the carbon dioxide level. Yes, we made a lot of assumptions, and some of them are obviously wrong-but they’re not crazy-wrong. For example, we simplified by saying the trees are all the same. But allowing them to be different wouldn’t change the result if our generic tree is a good middle-of-the-pack average. The real question is whether our model is biased in one direction or the other. One obvious bias is that we assumed away branches. (I'm trying to picture a poor village smithy standing under a non-spreading chestnut tree …) But how much more carbon would we trap with branches? Twenty percent? Even if it doubles the reduction, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 still rounds off to 400 ppm. How about one more quick estimation. If everyone planted a tree, how much land would that require? Let's say they’re planted in a square grid, 5 meters apart, so that each tree takes up an area of 25 square meters. With 7.5 billion trees, that requires 1.8 x 1011 square meters of land, or 72,000 square miles. That's roughly the size of North Dakota. Oh, for comparison, the Amazon rain forest has an area of 2.1 million square miles.

[@helbrassen4576]

Planting trees aren't a solution to the problem, trees absorb CO2 when they grow that is true, but once a tree grows old and die all that CO2 it's used to grow with will be released in to the atmosphere once more, planting trees isn't a solution that will help in any serious way.

[@Hiraeth_1194]

My name is John Hill, and today is the first day of my fight against climate change, wish me luck

[@luck2542]

Hows it going

[@luigib9025]

Instead of insalling the Systems where there's low concentration, install it near the emissions. e.g. In the factories' exhausts

[@gdr1174]

It should be removed at source, the emission shouldn't be released into the atmosphere unless X percentage of CO2 has been removed first somehow.. easier said than done I'm sure

[@foxlies0106]

Amen. but then energy industry would have to pay. They get Dr. Wilcox to convince you to pay for it, via the vastly less efficient Direct Air Capture. Disgusting waste she should be ashamed.

[@fleecemaster]

I'm a chemist, and I have to say I've given this some thought over the last few years and I have to say that 90% of what she is talking about is rubbish. If you really want to capture carbon, then the cheapest way is to buy charcoal, compress and store it. A ton of charcoal is about $200 per ton, with a dedicated plant making it for non-burning purposes I'm pretty sure you can get this to $100 per ton, the number she said was verging on impossible. Even $200 per ton is three times cheaper than her current "best". Anyway, there are two problems, the real problems: a) the amount of energy/cost required to revert CO2 levels back to pre-industrial times would take about twice the amount of energy we've used since the industrial revolution, pretty unfeasible. Secondly, assuming we can compress this carbon to it's absolute smallest, the amount of space it takes up is incredible. Assuming we can compress it to the density of water (pretty high) then a ton of carbon would be about a 1m cube. So 1 million tons of carbon would be a 100m cube. If we're talking about billions as she is, we're talking about 10km sized cubes. That's a lot of space, even trying to fit that underground we're going to run into problems. Yet she's not even touched on these issues! What a joke, the whole thing! She just wants more funding for her crappy fake science which is probably for some other application and this is just a ruse. Whatever, let the planet burn... Scientist out.

[@xyzsame4081]

I have a revolutionary idea: Leaving the already compressed carbon in the earth. Cutting down the boreal (Northern) forests and the rain forests (soy beans for cheap meat, cheap particle boards, paper, palm oil, or EU mandated plant based fuel !!!!) takes us even more in the wrong direction. In the moderate climate zone MORE trees could be planted (or hemp). They often last for decades in some cases centuries (either as tree or when used for QUALITY buildings). That would buy us time. Algae can also take up a lot of CO2 - they might do it more effectively than trees (need for light space. After all a tree needs roots, a supportive structure, leaves, defense from attacks.

[@joestangowitz3609]

Hey I like what you wrote if you read this come back to this feed and read what I wrote about a personal CO2 scrubber and see what your thoughts are.

[@danielleannet8024]

I'm a scientist hurdy hurdy, CO2 no go back in the ground, where you put. I'm smart, I'm a scientist, out

[@TechAddictClub]

Why can't we use vertical farming? It requires less space (surface), decreases CO2 and moreover produces food! Or at least try the good old (re)forestation!

[@yecyecii6820]

Let's go back to stone age. No cars. Use electric cars. No more use of oil for vehicles. Make less population so less exhaling of carbon dioxide. Use horses and carriages, it is more fun to ride with animals. No use plastics. Let's make a cause. Stop thinking about business and competitions in business.

[@midnight8341]

You can't use vertical farming, as it isn't viable with all the energy you'd need to just light up your plants and aforrestation doesn't work, because with that we'd need more land area than there is on this planet. We need to capture the CO2 somehow and store it safely. I would suggest building massive algae farms out on the oceans, drying the algae and burning them without oxygen to produce ash. From that you can extract the metals they needed for survival for another round and turn all the carbon into one big block that you can simply let sink to the ocean floor, like a big brick.

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

They are doing just that in Japan. It's still prototype phase, but even so they produce 12,000 heads of lettuce a day. And they use specific red&blue spectrum LED lights. Plants actually waste most of the energy they receive from the sun. Everything below infrared and above blue isn't used at all and most infrared. Everything between red and blue is mostly not used(As the linked article about NASA research below shows)e. They also don't need full daylight brightness to grow at all. So they need a lot less light intensity then we ourselves need. But as the Japanese experiments show. Using just Red&Blue LED lighting works just fine. And according to an article I found it uses just 40 watts of power to provide lights for a 9 meter diameter growth wheel with many growbeds in it.(The amount of power used by an old low power incandescent light bulb) ( www.cropscience.bayer.com/en/stories/2016/from-the-cities-and-into-the-skies-the-rise-of-the-vertical-farm ). An added bonus is that they use only a fraction of the water that is used for the same amount of crops in a conventional farm. And they also only use a fraction of the electricity of conventional greenhouses for the same crop yield. Article on NASA Research: advancedledlights.com/blog/technology/nasa-research-optimum-light-wavelengths-plant-growth/

[@TheBaconWizard]

@@midnight8341 The light is called "the sun"

[@midnight8341]

@@TheBaconWizard you can't light a vertical farm just by sunlight, that would mean building a skyscraper-sized building not just with a steel-glass fassade, but with all of the structural elements made from translucent materials just for plants (good luck getting that financed somehow) and you'd need more than that one building per city, even if you produce year round. So you need artificial lighting at least 16/24 and if you slap solar cells on your glass roof, that blocks sunlight your plants need that you then have to replace with more artificial lighting. And with current solar technology and lighting conditions, that won't cut it.

[@edgarrobinson7725]

This would be an ideal application for molten salt reactors.

[@onijunbei]

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, vegetation needs it

[@petergambier]

Interesting talk thanks. I'm doing my bit for the world by using Lime Putty mortars and plasters in my building work because unlike cement mortars, lime mortars capture CO2 and they also use less energy to produce and let your building breath. Another interesting fact is that my in-laws in Germany had a ground sourced heat pump installed in their new build home and it paid for itself within 5 years. If we had solar panels on all new buildings plus small wind turbines, ground and air sourced heat pumps and other thermal or kinetic energy systems as standard we could do so much to lower peoples energy needs couldn't we? In my work as a conservation builder I have made strawbale and cob structures and these places could easily last 100 years or more. The average new-build home is probably designed to last no more than about 30 to 40 years and uses so many toxic chemicals and glues in their construction, not to mention the amount of wood and plastic waste that ends up in landfill. My own home has no guttering or foundations, is about 300 years old and is built of cob on a rubble-stone plinth with a thatched straw roof. It's warmish in winter and nicely cool in the summer and there is a septic tank system for our waste water which isn't connected to the mains. We pay about £150 per year for it to be collected and taken away to a treatment plant.

[@alanblanes2876]

I am glad that you are interested in putting all the strategies for carbon management together, Jennifer. I personally want to see the world use the 17 Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 to really work on continental water management, to conserve seasonal run-off and divert it into constructed wetlands, instead of allowing flooding to occur every spring. This water needs to be used to replenish all water tables and reservoirs and purified water that has gone through all the phytoremediation plants like mosses can then be returned to the oceans without the hormones, antibiotics and other toxic materials that are disrupting living organisms in the oceans. Restored water availability on all continents will enable afforestation to be achieved in barren regions of the continents. This is an opportunity to use trillions of cubic meters of water every year, which could offset the meltwater from collapsing ice caps, and the enabling of the repair of the "Global Forest" as described by botanist Diana Beresford-Kroeger in her book by the same name, would enable the human habitat to be protected, and this would be the most effective way to restore the carbon, nitrogen and oxygen cycles on planet Earth. www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/04/planting-billions-trees-best-tackle-climate-crisis-scientists-canopy-emissions

[@Yansworldd]

I feel like we have to go backwards filter out the air then plant trees and finally try to not release CO2 in the first place

[@sherrigofdenmark2823]

There are multiple problems with this, not everyone will be willing to pay the taxes needed for such a large project. Another major problem is that removing too much Co2 from our atmosphere in such little time would severely damage the environment.

[@TheeInjun]

Since when are we "willing," to pay taxes? Haha but I do agree, what sounds like a great idea is in fact a giant experiment on our only inhabitable planet, to test a hypothesis which seems to make a lot of sense when people talk about it, but which may well result in some unforeseen effects that are not at all trendy to worry about in most crowds. Watch your step, Friend; you may be wise, but you are not "cool."

[@tangobayus]

CO2 is a mobile form of carbon that is used to create the building blocks of life. In the Cretaceous Era CO2 was > 1000 ppm, perhaps as high as 1700 ppm. There was no ice at the poles and tropical plants grew at the latitude of what is now New York.

[@empresasarrinc.3440]

Thank you someone that brings real knolage CO2 is life you want more green planet you need more CO2

[@davidyeates8381]

Time will tell whether there is any merit in removing CO2 from air. The way I see it is that the so called greenhouse gases play an important role in maintaining Earth’s temperature at an average of about 16 deg C that without those so-called much maligned gases the earth’s temperature would drop to about - 18C that would freeze oceans and bring life as we know it to a standstill.

[@tangobayus]

@@davidyeates8381 Getting back to pre-industrial levels of CO2 means getting back to pre-industrial levels of food production. Millions, perhaps billions, of people will starve. Water vapor is about 95% of greenhouse gas.Those evil people know that CO2 is plant food.

[@freyfaust6218]

The climate catastrophists make several fatal errors when they argue for their POV. 1. They are completely unskeptical about a subject which is very obviously controversial among climate scientists and earth scientists in general. There is no such thing as a partial consensus. Consensus is total or it is not consensus. Consensus is a matter of opinion, not scientific protocol for proof. Absolute conviction in a scientist is already suspicious, but when its about a controversial subject, that discredits them utterly. 2. They want to have us all believe that the trace of a trace gas that humans contribute to is the driver for a gigantic, chaotic system with enormous forces and thousands of contributing elements. They look at the entire past and present dynamics and imagine co2 everywhere. This is not science. 3. The scientists at the IPCC were caught red handed in the early 2000s cooking the graphs to make the past temperature record colder and steady. They should all have been fired, but were never punished. When Catastrophic AGW people make claims and use materials from the IPCC, they cannot be taken seriously. 4. The Catastrophists attempt to make co2 seem toxic. Co2 is not a toxin, any more than oxygen. Co2 is as vital to life on the planet as oxygen and water. 400 ppm is already homeopathic compared to periods in the past when it was 1000s of ppm and life was flourishing. 150 ppm is the level at which all life would and has died. At 400 ppm, the current global level is LOW. 600 is common under a forest canopy. 2k to 3k on a submarine or in the space station. Co2 is pumped into actual greenhouses at 1000s of ppm because it helps with photosynth and water uptake. Without Co2 we would not be able to digest or breathe. 5. They claim that the oil companies are holding back research and are buying off their opposition. Actually, the oil industry has its head down and is funding alternative energy research and giving a lot to the IPCC. The real catastrophy is the one these snake oil salesmen would instigate if they were successful at making everyone hysterical enough to panic. Not to mention the billions they are siphoning up in tax dollars for their phony models and ridiculous prognostications, not one of which has come true. And this is the last and most damning evidence of the lie, the absolutely stunning record of failed predictions over the last 30 years. A very important aspect of any scientific theory is that it must predict effects. When the predictions fail, the theory has been disproven.

[@marktomasetti8642]

Frey Faust - It just seems extremely unlikely that the thinking that went into the organization of the Paris agreement could have been got wrong by so many countries, many of which depend on CO2 releasing fuels. I think they’d all rather the issue just went away. Something serious enough to get this many countries talking just seems so unlikely to be a hoax, even if some scientists misbehaved.

[@freyfaust6218]

@@marktomasetti8642 except that there is zero proof that humans are driving a warming trend in climate change. This century's rate of warming is very mild compared to other periods. Co2 is a vital, life supporting gas with a tiny radiation absorption spectrum. It makes up less than one percent of the atmosphere. During many of the periods when life was flourishing on this planet, the atmospheric co2 content was thousands of ppm, rather than only a few hundred as it is today. There are recent periods when co2 was lower and temperatures were much higher than they are today: 1911 and 1936 for example, several decades before humans started contributing to co2 through industry. It is patently ridiculous to pretend that co2 is the climate driver. Not to mention 30 years of failed predictions by politicians and scientists on the take from the climate tax bonanza.

[@marktomasetti8642]

Frey Faust - Whether humans are causing climate change or not doesn’t matter. All that matters are, (1) is it happening, and (2) is it going to be a problem for humans. If both of those are true, we really ought to save ourselves as much difficulty as we can. Another large organization which is very concerned about climate change is the US department of defense. They’re concern is that the large migrations likely to occur due to loss of sea coasts and loss of farmable land may lead to national security threats. These are very hard-headed people who deal with real threats every day. Some of your facts seem off. This is from NASA: “As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years. In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degrees Celsius, roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming.” (earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/GlobalWarming/page3.php). Also, the industrial revolution started in the late 1700’s with coal in common use since the 1800’s and there is a hockey-stick like jump in temperatures in vero that period. We keep losing huge chunks of Arctic and Antarctic ice to the point where new shipping lanes are open. The warmest weather temperatures since we’ve been recording them (maybe 150 years) have been in the past ten years. A rather broad array of intelligent and dedicated people say we need to look at this. I doubt that less well-informed people such as you or me could have much to add to the discussion.

[@freyfaust6218]

www.justfacts.com/globalwarming.asp the climate has always changed. It will always be a problem. Your facts are off. NASA scientists are not to b trusted at this point. The hockey stick is an outright hoax. The warming trend at the start if this interglacial ice age was 111 times the current rate, more than 2.5k years ago, and not a smokestack in sight. 1911 was much hotter than the present, and co2 was.low, that is a fact.

[@marktomasetti8642]

Frey Faust - “The climate has always changed, it will always be a problem.” That’s just not good thinking. Yes, the climate has changed for 4 billion years, but it doesn’t always threaten human life as it is now expected to do. I’m not clear about the cause of the current climate change, as I said, it’s not important, it could be CO2 or something else. Whatever the cause, the consequences look bad for humanity. Can we agree that matters that threaten large chunks of the human race ought to be looked at? Especially ones that may take a long time to address - it won’t help to find out in 2050 that we should have started making corrections in the year 2000. I don’t know anything about justfacts.com, but below are the hottest ten years in recorded history from NOAA (I’m not sure if the table will paste correctly). The only one NOT after 2000 is 1998. 1911 is not mentioned. Nine out of the 10 are in the past 15 years. Top 10 warmest years (NOAA) (1880-2018) Rank Year Anomaly °C Anomaly °F 1 2016 0.94 1.69 2 2015 0.90 1.62 3 2017 0.84 1.51 4 2018 0.77 1.39 5 2014 0.74 1.33 6 2010 0.70 1.26 7 2013 0.66 1.19 8 2005 0.65 1.17 9 2009 0.64 1.15 10 1998 0.63 1.13

[@leonreaper90]

Remove carbon from our atmosphere > we die

[@zeee149]

Exactly!! We have at the moment around 400ppm of C02, which is historically speaking incredibly low.. It has been 2000, 3000 4000ppm in the earths past. Plants, crops and trees cannot survive and will die if the concentration falls to 150ppm. The concentration of C02 in the hall this lecture was given in, with all the people emmiting C02 as they exhale, was probably around 1800ppm. Plants and crops thrive when the concentration is around this level, and they use less water in photosynthesis too. : )

[@thecutestcuck7978]

As an over the road trucker I could just haul your needs in a wheel barrel. You get back to me on how the stores shelves look at the end of the day.

[@jesseoreilly1792]

Couldn't we use Nuclear plants to capture carbon? We'd probably be able to clean the atmosphere and provide massive amounts of clean energy at the same time, no? I think of the biggest stumbling blocks towards solving these climate/energy issues is people's superstitious fear of even discussing Nuclear energy as a viable option.

[@shanebranly3582]

What exactly do you think nuclear plants do? I'm not sure how you think heating water with nuclear fuel rods in a closed loop to turn water in a 2nd non-closed loop into steam to drive a turbine and make electricity... has anything to do with carbon capture.

[@jesseoreilly1792]

LOL. Because carbon capture plants require electricity to run, obviously. It's been a few months now since I watched this but does she not discuss right in the video the challenge of designing carbon capture facilities who's carbon footprint isn't equal to or greater than the amount of carbon they are able to capture? If not this video, I have certainly read/heard that elsewhere. My point was that nuclear energy would be the cleanest/most reliable source of electricity available to power large scale carbon capture plants.

[@gabevillarreal6940]

I work at a nuclear power plant and I must say using a nuclear power plant is a good idea to make the power required it will fall short on the economic end. The plant that I work at cost 6 billion with a b to build. Requires 400 people to maintain it. And produces approximately 1000 megawatts of electricity. While the plant is online it makes about 1.3 million in a 24 hour period. If the plant goes down it requires enormous amounts of money to buy special nuclear engineered parts which cost massive amounts of money. The plant is only profitable if it is running at 85% or higher. That means only about 15% of the plant electricity could be used to power the carbon capture side of the plant . And that’s just to break even. I like the idea though.

[@jesseoreilly1792]

@@gabevillarreal6940 Thanks for the input, Gabriel! It's nice to hear from someone with an intimate knowledge on the subject. Out of curiosity, what is your job title and how long have you worked in the nuclear industry? I am fascinated by the subject. I am an oil and gas well operator and also oversee a small power plant which runs on NG, obviously.

[@gabevillarreal6940]

I have been working in the nuclear industry for about 10 years now . I am a supervisor I charge of mechanical maintenance. I like this idea but nobody is gonna build a nuclear power plant that makes no money lol.

[@alberona100]

Janet i've enjoyed your presentation, and i applaud you on the work you are doing, I would've liked more details on the synthetic forest, however, i would like to suggest an idea that a think it may be possible to put together a team of engineers, technologist, phd's like you, to do research on removing co2 directly at the source. ( at the exhaust of cars, trucks, airplanes ) this would be a device attached to the prime mover exhaust and work like a catalytic converter. the carbon particles would be collected at the end of the day and stored and recycled. I know this is costly but it could help the problem now, thus permitting the use of fossil fuel until complete electrification of our prime movers be completed. it is just an idea/ we need to ask all these fossil fuel corporations to finance this research, therefore all of our populace should urgently apply our concern to our representatives in our governments-world wide, or else our beautiful planet is doomed. Regards, Antonio, Canada

[@alberona100]

another suggestion-- why not liquify the exhaust from the power plants and store the liquid in a depository underground ???

[@ocram7500]

What a whole lot of crap this time. Why not stop with the burning of fossil fuels, instead of getting co2 with chemicals and burning fuel ....what in my eyes just as worse is ....

[@transon6655]

Marco Janssen look at France

[@tobiastranetellefsen4203]

Many people who work in those industries worlwide would loose their job.

[@SuperYGOD]

If God uses trees, then we should too.

[@archezwei1729]

God has algae and corals too

[@wompbozer3939]

God created humans too.

[@ssgp7297]

God created apes but they turned unexpectadly into humans

[@pepitocardio]

For all of the anti-planting-tree people: Considering that top researchers say that reducing emissions is the most effective way to combat GHG, don’t you think it would be super helpful if we started reducing our usage/consumption? What better way to fill in that gap of time than to just foster some plants, for that cherry on top? Leave the solutions that require super cash to the ones that have super cash. Everyone is capable of mitigation and discipline, and with a little extra work we each contribute to both reduction of existing and of emission. I just don’t see what there is to lose.

[@williamwells835]

Yes. Our decadence is at the root of many a major crisis, not the least of which being the climate crisis. An ethic of frugality and moderation are indeed in order.

[@williamwells835]

. . . Couple that with the wise use of technology, which be an integral part of frugality -- the wise use of resources for long term returns. . . . Wisdom, itself, plays into this of course. Yet we give mere knowledge, even in universities, priority over wisdom -- which is what higher learning really is. . . . And so we have the cart before the horse: We learn how "to get a living" -- before learning how to just live; . . . and living as conservers more than just mere consumers.

[@oleersoy6547]

This should be a case study in NOT over thinking it ...

[@gunnyliu6141]

Love her use of precise numbers and figures to illustrate the very specific point that - yes, _if_ the public invests $20B a year it will only capture 5% of US emissions given $100 per ton. Not sure why people are mad, but these are all matters of exact scale and proportion. Side pt: a recent startup named Heirloom is shooting for $50 per ton.

[@tomcochran6616]

So you believe the numbers we are manipulated with statistics all the time. Don't think she isn't doing the same thing.

[@foxlies0106]

tremendous waste of money. subsidizinng exxon w taxpayer $. insane and disgusting. Methane stop venting immediately. they PV batteries wind efficiency. PV batteries wind efficiency

[@rolfsommer5939]

Besides the obvious bottleneck in the concept - produce CO2 to capture CO2 - I guess it is the price tag that makes this technology little competitive. If indeed the price for a ton of CO2 was above $100.- then there are other "technologies" (such as paying people _not_ to deforest the Amazonian or Indonesian rain forests, afforestation, greening the Sahel, soil carbon sequestration, etc.) that are much cheaper doing the very same. It is seems also a bit smarter to produce timber than liquid CO2 that needs to be stored somewhere ... forever!

[@grahampawar]

What if we just have a sensor that detects carbon molecules and activates the process...when not available,it just rests...

[@aayushkatoch10-b60]

Bro it is very diff to detect a carbon molecule

[@Dazzzlah]

'Pulling Co2 out of the air is actually really difficult'. I've found the answer, plant a tree.

[@georgemargaris]

so are you gonna put a tree next to every chimney or car exhaust?

[@alanthompson4912]

This is the answer!

[@alanthompson4912]

Trees!

[@peachxsncreamgacha567]

bRuH trees will give back Co2 if given too much. you need way more than a forest

[@thomaspaine5601]

@@peachxsncreamgacha567 What?

[@charliebrandt2263]

From UK: The very best remover of CO2 is the soil, better than trees! It so happens we have destroyed almost half the worlds soil. Some projects, restoring the soil have already been established around the world on a small scale. It takes around 5 to ten years to restore the soil to health, depending on conditions, doing it's job growing plants. Useful to us as food! If we did this at scale, develop water sources etc. A return to the land needed could also help the increase in unemployment, as part of the destructive problem is industrial chemical based farming which is adding in an insect apocalypse that has to stop. As well as the rising poisoning of our coastal waters! And the soil under the chemicalised monocrops? Carbon emitting instead of carbon capturing!

[@hrithikgeorge4571]

400 ppm is tiny! Perhaps location would an option to consider later, for example, directly inside or outside factories’ ventilation system.

[@aegystierone8505]

A new way to remove CO2..... Plant trees boom where's my TEDTALK?

[@grindupBaker]

A new way to remove CO2. I thought they would say everybody breath in at once. It's a matter of timing.

[@aegystierone8505]

@@grindupBaker or everybody stop breathing......

[@WadcaWymiaru]

Remove CO2 and ALL plants will DIE !!! CO2 level should be like 1200 ppm, no joke!

[@sidharthafocus]

That only works if you grow trees then cut and bury them so they turn into coal that nobody is ever allowed to mine.

[@simonhill6267]

@@sidharthafocus rebuilding soil also sequesters co2, you can even use biochar to rebuild soil and sequester carbon

[@ethersecure2432]

"And so the point I'd like all of you to leave today with, is... I'm better than my husband. Thank you."

[@lyrablack8621]

That's the takeaway for you? Yikes

[@green4lifelove444]

Were using 1500 PPM co2 in our greenhouse and the plants are fantastic. Ive never had a problem in there with co2 at that level.

[@coreymicallef365]

In a greenhouse it fine to have extra CO2, but that's because it's a more or less small controlled environment. Out in the atmosphere though on a large scale it absorbs light and converts it to heat reducing the planets albedo (basically it's reflectivity to sunlight) meaning that it, the Earth, heats up. We aren't going to give ourselves CO2 poisoning by buring fossil fuels, that doesn't happen until much higher CO2 consentrations.

[@wozzie87]

This idea could be the first step to a method where co2 is captured where it was released. If this idea gets developed enough, you could have a miniaturized version that gets put on exhaust pipes of cars, power plants and any number of other sources to help capture the co2 as it is released. Those miniature version would work together with larger farms/models that pull directly from the atmosphere at locations where it is more efficient to have those larger versions. Plants are obviously one area that should be heavily used because it is a ready to method that doesn't need any expensive r&d to be usable, however plants are not a total solution because they are unable to solve the whole problem completely. Only by using multifaceted approach, that attacks this issue from multiple angles can we solve this issue in an appropriate time frame. Take electric cars for example, adding a larger battery to an electric cars is not the only way to increase their mileage. You can make any number of other adjustments, changes and tweaks to the physical, mechanical and technical aspects of the car that cause the electric car to have more miles per charge. Resolving our co2 problem will take the same kinda of multifaceted approach.

[@petercoxable]

How how she danced around the issue with this. She said coal is no good for power because of Co2. Then talked about cost for the rest of the presentation. Gas, oil etc. YOU NEED FOSSIL FUELS OR NUCLEAR TO DO THIS!!!. It’s that simple. This is such a waste of time when the oceans and the phytoplankton are responsible for 70% of the carbon cycle.

[@drmosfet]

What do you get when you cross a thorium reactor with a CO2 scrubber, an oil companies worse nightmare.

[@Mornys]

If only we had self replicating objects which would use solar power to collect CO2 from atmosphere...

[@RubenKelevra]

Omnia in numeris we have, it just needs too much space. To collect all CO2 from the United States you would need 20 rainforest. Where exactly do you want to plant them? The whole plan is about getting a similar mechanisms down by landuse and don't consume soil which is good for agriculture. If you have an better idea: run the numbers and show us, I'm interested.

[@davedrewett2196]

Well played sir. I take my hat off to you.

[@RubenKelevra]

@@re-verdesiendomexico5188 have you recently looked at the prices per kilo on nuts? It's nuts. You cannot feed a population on these expenses, that's why we don't do it.

[@ranter7100]

@Awakened2Truth - Disciple of Jesus the Christ Well that's your view I suspect you are well into the minority as about 97% of scientists qualified in this field would disagree with you. (but well done with the information you have provided) They would be backed up with an ever increasing amount of data, reports, study's, etc. (Nearly all of this stuff you can find on line though different formats) Many reports and study's done as far back as the 1980's have shown this what is going to happen, and here we are it's happening. I guess the thing that puzzles me is this, If all the things that are required to fix this are implemented we end up with a healthy planet better for all living things, even if global warming is wrong. if on the other hand we do nothing ....................................................................we along with ever other living thing on the planet could be dead. Our planet could just end up looking like mars. unable to support life. So just on the chance that catastrophic global warming is real wouldn't you just get on board. I mean at the end of the day it's going to make no difference to the universe I suppose But i just fell that the stakes are to high To take your view.

[@ranter7100]

@Awakened2Truth - Disciple of Jesus the Christ you give yourself away and belittle your self good luck out there, I suspect your view on intelligence could really be improved somewhat if you used just a little.

[@muhammedjaved786]

Controlled algae blooms are the best option.

[@DennisDeSlager]

Why is everyone saying there isnt enough space for planting trees? All humanity together has a total CO2 emission of 45,000,000,000,000 kilogram CO2. 1 tree absorbs a bit more than 20 kilograms of CO2 per year so we would need a total of 45,000,000,000,000÷20=2,250,000,000,000 trees. Lets say a forest has 200,000 trees per km2 (1 tree per 5 m2). That is 2,250,000,000,000÷200,000=11,250,000 km2 of forest, thats a bit more than the total size of the USA and around 7.5% percent of earth's land.

[@hkm7602]

in fact, in the 2050s, the Earth's temperature rises by about 3°C, which the majority of humanity cannot guarantee its survival. That's why people say we need to reduce carbon dioxide or methane emissions, but many people may not know what the specific measures are. The lecture specifically provided a way of doing so. I never knew there were so many ways to reduce carbon dioxide. The way carbon dioxide is used as fuel was also interesting. But if these technologies are not commercialized, not many companies will invest in them. From the perspective of the company, there should be investment value, because simply the technology for the environment is a loss to replace the existing cost-effective technology. I hope that the use of carbon dioxide will be further studied to increase its value as a fuel.

[@wmarkfish]

Thorium molten salt reactors will do the work of supplying the carbon free energy and simultaneously use up radioactive waste.

[@haribabuprakash2543]

Any site where reliable CO2 data is available?

[@mrscott80]

Why would you want to remove c02 out the air? C02 is life.

Can't they use the excess heat of power plant for this?

[@bacon3703]

Atmospheric CO2 removal or some other method of global cooling has honestly become necessary to reverse climate change. Carbon Engineering has recently made some major advances in carbon removal tech that's lowered the cost of atmospheric carbon removal to around $100 per tonne. They've also developed a carbon based, carbon neutral fuel, made from atmospheric carbon removal, that can be used in cars, planes, boats, or in any existing engine for about the same price as gasoline. Chevron, Occidental, and BHP have invested ~$70 million in them in 2019 alone. This is a problem that can, and might just be, solved in the next 10 years.

[@Bommelstein13]

If she has her way, we are dead! How can one be so shortsighted?!

[@Coyot0xx0]

Internal combustion engines emit a lot of excess heat. Isn't it possible to produce modern cars with a built-in CO2 capturing technology while we are developing electric cars to be fully functional?

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

Seems a logical thought yes. Afteral a combustion engine loses a lot of the energy in the burned fuel as heat through it's exhaust. So why not use that heat to capture the CO2 from the exhaust gases. However I'm fairly certain you need a bigger volume to acutally capture the CO2 out of the atmosphere then you could fit into a car. However I don't see why this couldn't be done for power plants or factories.

[@johngage5391]

Why not put a price on pollution and let efficient market forces figure out the best path to reduce it? Here's a plan to do that that is beneficial and bipartisan: cclusa.org/energy-innovation-act

[@colingenge9999]

@@PhoenixNL72-DEGA- You don't collect co2 using heat but rather using pumps and chemical arrays that would be roughly the size of a car. You wouldn't be able to capture co2 effectively but if you could, you'd acquire 1 pound of co2 per mile; how are you going to store that and how to get rid of it? Electric cars are much better in every way than gas cars that have no future.

[@bashful228]

what on a vast scale like the deforestation we've done (mostly for grazing livestock and growing feed for them)?

[@JB-gy7ip]

CRAZY ! Vous feriez de ne plus respirer ou alors de planter des arbres !

[@hanjohnson1]

400 ppm carbon dioxide actually means that there is 999600 of oxygen and nitrogen.

[@maclee2036]

Australia has a huge outback that is both barren and dry. problem is the availability of fresh water. but if you can plant 10% of the place, you would have a forest the size of italy. de-desertification must be a priority for all nations.

[@yarodin]

There's the contradiction: on one hand, we need to remove CO2 from the athmosphere permanently. Agreed. But making synthetic fuels from it puts it right back into the atmosphere. Doesn't make sense, does it?

[@Eza_yuta]

The purpose of that is making carbon neutral fuel. So it's like recycled carbon fuel instead making new one.

[@hdmat101]

Create reverse-vape devices which the user sucks the co2 vapour out of the air and gets high.

[@CUBETechie]

Why should we remove CO2 From the atmosphere? It's necessary for life of plants.

[@raisingconsciousness777]

Exactly! To grow crops, some farmers pump in THREE times as much CO2 into their greenhouses as is in the atmosphere.The world has been sold a lie.

[@CheddarCheeseBandit]

C02 should be in the air, the planet is greener than years ago. Lower C02 in the air means less food, less plants, slower growing trees. When plants stop growing you’ll buy all of your food from the government with CC units (citizen credits)

[@norituk9824]

I don't get it. For the last 250 million years atmospheric CO2 content has been many times what it is now. It's only since the onset of the latest ice age, 2.5 million years ago that CO2 content has fallen to 400 ppm (only 200 ppm above extinction level) so, arguably, we're helping the planet by putting it back.

[@Pablo-ur3dz]

Or just use a incredible machine earth perfected for millions of years... 🌲

[@jesusserranojimenez8069]

Actually it hasn't been developed any process that reduces CO2 to hydrocarbons or something as trees do. A lot of catalysts, with a molecular structure similar to chlorophyll, have been made to try to simulate the photosynthesis process, but without success.

[@kraft3344able]

1 acre of trees produce enough oxygen for 12 humans. 1 acre of grass produces enough oxygen for 70 humans. What grows easier and faster

[@beridot2615]

yeah but they dont use all the CO2 at once.

[@jesperchristoffersen8413]

@@kraft3344able I doubt it sequesters as much carbondioxide, though, which is the point of it all??

[@kraft3344able]

@@jesperchristoffersen8413 no it doesn't sequester CO2. It breaks it down during photosynthesis. Uses carbon stores what it doesn't use and release oxygen into the air for us to breath. Didn't you take science in highschool. Are you that ignorant or just being a troll. Go head drink some more liberal kool-aid

[@srguptapc]

Plants grow faster with higher C02 concentrations. It is a self balancing system. The only problem is human greed and the desire to have a new global tax.

[@ebeep]

I came here for a little hope and am now even more depressed.

[@MrChosenmarine]

I'd be depressed too if I though CO2 was bad and humans are a cancer on Earth

[@ebeep]

@@MrChosenmarine, point me in the direction of accredited research to the contrary. I could use the morale boost!

[@pieterkruger7560]

Removing carbon from the atmosphere is not good enough to stop global warming. The water cycle can make a larger contribution and to do that we need forests to cool down soil tempreture. Forests forms part of the water cycle.

[@MildManneredMen-r1o]

Why remove CO2 it is the most essential trace gas of life. Plants want 3xl more CO2.

[@johnw1111]

Just grow hemp instead and use it for everything!

[@markspc1]

Good idea !!!

[@epicwarframepvp6389]

Let em know

[@Gehargen2]

Dude weed lmao.

[@wc3350]

Exactly. replace most of plastics with hemp

[@mojoorenstein]

Yeah, man! Like Dude, it's so freaking obvious, man! Smoki- I mean growing hemp will like save us all-----man! Like dude bro, think about it----man. Read The King Has No Clothes, it'll change your life---man!

[@DK-vw1of]

Thorium reactors are the future

[@sarahjong7977]

basically the martian

[@squamish4244]

And 4th-stage nuclear reactors.

[@coreymicallef365]

@@squamish4244 thorium power is a type of nuclear power. But regardless nuclear power is the way to go, regardless of which fuel we use.

[@coreymicallef365]

@A.J. Torzyk there's a few problems with it as our primary energy source, first off we can't even do deuterium-tritium or dueterium-dueterium fusion well enough to work yet as a power source and both of those need far less heat and pressure to work than any of the fusion options involving helium 3 (and that's the real stumbling block, maintaining the required temperatures and pressures) so it's not of immediate use to us and the problem is urgent. Another problem is as you said our most convenient source of He3 is on the moon, so that will be a logistical challenge even if we only need a small mass of it, especially considering that it's almost evenly distributed across the lunar surface, there's little in the way of concentrated deposits to mine so it means sifting through a lot of mass to extract it. Third the main advantage of that type of fusion is that it's aneutronic which would make it a great engine for a spacecraft because it means less shielding but dealing with stray neutrons here on the ground isn't much of an issue, adding a couple of feet of concrete as a shield and using other fusion technologies would be far easier. Lastly is that there is far more easily available fuels on Earth, there's enough uranium in seawater to last millions of years (around 4.5 billion metric tons), thorium is approximately 3 times more abundant than that in the Earth's crust and the fusion fuel I mentioned before, deuterium, there's approximately 17.9 trillion tons of that just in the ocean, that's enough fuel to last longer than the remaining life of the sun. I'm not saying He3 is useless but the technology we would need to use it could be used for other options that would be more appropriate for our needs.

[@carlobraggatto7910]

Why just don’t use plants for that? Trees, are a very good way to keep our planet alive, Co2 criminalisation is a very lucrative scam,

[@ronaldgarrison8478]

There is a LOT of room for innovation in this area. Some possible aids in this: 1. If you site these capture plants in the right places, you can avoid using fans, by using existing, natural winds. 2. As Ms Wilcox says, you can use industrial process heat to release the CO2 from the capture medium. 3. Possibly the hardest part is disposing of the captured CO2. One thing that has been considered is to put the CO2 at the bottom of an ocean, where it is under much pressure. At first glance, this is infeasible, as the CO2 will mix through the ocean in a century or two. But you can use light, cheap containers that isolate the CO2, without having to contend with massive forces. The sequestration only has to last several thousand years, and does not have to be totally reliable-some leakage is permissible. Put the containers (perhaps no more than sturdy plastic bags) in a quiet area, and containment may be possible very economically.

[@enderkoregameing8090]

you could repurpose the CO2 into other forms of it that are useful like fuel or graphite

[@ronaldgarrison8478]

@@enderkoregameing8090 Yeah, I guess we could work it out with a pencil.

[@tazwoh2002]

It seems that that what they need to do is approach the root of whats causing the over balance of CO2. How much damage will be caused to the planet by messing about with levels of what is "Naturally" in the air. By levels i mean, our Atmosphere has 78% Nitrogen - 21% Oxygen 0.93 Argon and 0.04% Carbon with trace elements of neon,helium,methane,krypton, hydrogen as well as water vapor. Now what percentage of Carbon are you looking at removing from the atmosphere . what would happen to natural habitat in the process ?

[@pathosofmine]

Just found out about this through the Foundation of Economic Education, this tech needs to be more widespread and known!

[@VaughnKenneth1]

Jennifer, I truly enjoyed your presentation and the intensity you provide your PHD knowledge. It is obvious you believe strongly in your work and Your assumptions for the good of all and that is a good human trait. I had a immediate knee jerk reaction to your presentation but wanted to absorbed your information further, check out some other sources, meditate over it, then form my own opinion as to a wisdom on how it should affect me and my day to day life and those I may come in contact with. For I am a believer that everything in the universe is connected and if I change just a little of myself, the rest of the universe has to change with me. Therefore, I don't have to change you, Maybe you have change me in a little sort of way, I don't know! Thank You for your time. My Fact: Yes, the climate is changing. Yes, Man/Womankind does affect their own environment. Yes, Man/Womankind should be good stewards of the environment that has been provided to us. Yes, comparatively speaking, I don't know what the correct co2 level should be on this planet. Yes, Man/Womankind will always have to change and adapt to the prevailing environment. Comparatively speaking, how much control does Man/Womankind have or wish to exert over the environment in comparison to the infinite universe as a whole. Manipulation around the absolute truth for whatever reason is avoidance of coming to terms with ones own existence. Its all thought provoking. Thanks.

[@Eza_yuta]

Womankind? Pfftt.. Hello, Huwoman. 🤣

[@wichitazen]

Huh?

[@joelonsdale]

It's your point that by trying to engineer or way out of the problem is to deny the problem itself? That's plainly nonsense.

[@valdemar-q7n]

To everyone who says "Just plant trees" No, that wont work. We emit so much co2 that replanting the entire rainforest wouldn't be enough to save us. It would be a big help, but it alone is not enough.

[@delarzarlasan9240]

gladly, we're running out of easy accessible oil. hopefully, we'll never run out of trees. reforestation will not just bind co2, it holds humidity and water that we need in ecosystems for surviving (rain, drinking water, agriculture). so in my opinion we should not just hold up the co2 emissions against trees, we will have to change our way of living anyway, don't you agree? and trees will help us alot with this because they help preserve local ecosystems, so we keep sweet water on mainland, so we can produce local food, so we don't need to import all the goods with oil. trees are just so much more than co2 catchers :) i suggest you check out geoff lawtons "greening the desert project". i hope i can give you some perspective on that, let me know what you think.

[@extensionflexxin1482]

Delar Zarlasan oil is endless. It’s a facade to monopolize it . But we have the Tesla model 3 which will put oil out of business

[@delarzarlasan9240]

okay, we might disagree on the accessibility of oil. can you back that statement up? but what do you think about the rest of my comment? in my opinion restoring an ecosystem is much more important (for our western modern standards it's also more boring) than building exciting new machines with fancy technologies. it's like when you have a bad neckpain from sitting on a computer all day, then you get expensive medical treatment but it somehow it keeps getting worse. you'd just have to think about the whole attitude, do what seems boring, like stretching, looking after what and how nature gave it to you, your body.

[@tomthecasual5337]

@@extensionflexxin1482 tell me: where there endless animals and plants trapped in anoxic conditions, so they didnt get recycled by microorganisms. where those endless trapped organisms all covered with hundreds of meters of sediments, so they got altered and compressed? where all of those altered organic composites located within permeable sediments and covered by an aquiclude, so they where trapped? what are you thinking geological surveyors are there for. why do they get payed so well? why are expensive technologies like horizontal drilling and fracking used, if oil is endless and they could just keep on pumping? why are oil companies planning on installing underwater platforms in the deep seas to get oil? becouse it gets more and more inaccessible so the methods need to be adjusted. you are eighter trolling or completly ignorant regarding that topic if you are serious with that statement.

[@tomthecasual5337]

@@delarzarlasan9240 biosphere: 0.005% of freshwater, rivers:0.005% soils: 0.3%, lakes: 0.5%, groundwater: 36,4%, ice, glaciers, permafrost: 62,8% (data from 2010, newer results may vary). the biosphere is not a usuable water reservoir. greening the desert, like the sahara desert for example, will cause long term nutrition problems in other regions, becouse the winds actually transport fresh minerals into forests like the amazonas and fertilize it (you may have heard of the term loess? it works pretty similar. same grain size and unweathered material). trees in the amazonas allready get burned down to reintroduce their elements (P,N,C etc) into the soil, so that new plants can grow faster (wich harms the ecosystem more than it helps). we should definetly do alot of REforesting (not aforesting) and counteract deforestation. furthermore we should crank down fertilization in certain areas and reduce the intensity of landuse in those areas, to prevent sinking groundwater levels. (it hurts my stomach to say it, but less livestock would be good) the rest is just about keeping biodiversity, drastically reduce the usuage of insecticide and strictly controll new development and testing of such products (e.g. effect on bees and other important insects), before they can get sold. the extinctionrates of vertebrae are allready much higher than the fossil background rates, so this problem should be tackled aswell. now this topic gets very complicated so i wont go into details. the point is: if we truly want to help to protect the ecosystems on earth, simply planting trees wont help. allthough they prevent erosion of soils, salinization, aridification of soils and are essential for alot of species (like birds, insects and so on). there is more to it.

[@alwelle3902]

"As little as $600 a ton." For one set of "scrubbers" that takes a 300 MW powerplant and $600 MILLION DOLLARS to remove one Mt of CO2. We release 9 Gt of CO2 a year. So just to keep it flat we would need 9 THOUSAND of them. That's (at ONLY 600 a ton) 5.4 TRILLION DOLLARS. That's TWICE the US total federal budget. This lecturer is CRAZY. If it were an order of magnitude cheaper it would ONLY cost 540 BILLION DOLLARS *per year* to keep CO2 levels from RISING. It would have to be 1000 times more efficient to be possible to remove CO2 at a reasonable rate and cost. When was the last time you heard of a 3 order magnitude improvement in a technology??

[@grindupBaker]

Yes. It's all vapour ware. It's a combination of Pollyanna cluelessness about the quantity of coal/oil/gas that's being burned and an understandable entrepreneurial search for making much wealth from process or patents/royalties. So our Canadian science program 7 days ago had an Aussie engineer who's developing a process to revert CO2 to coal (the word "coal" as the end product was used a few times) and bury it in the old coal mines to get rid of it. Our host Bob McDonald asked (grab on tight to something here) if future humans would be able to dig that synthetic coal up again and burn it if they wanted to. The Aussie engineer entrepreneur said sure. Totally clueless types like our Bob McDonald and entrepreneurial types like this Aussie engineer searching to make great wealth out of this issue. That's humans. There's negligible hope.

[@helbrassen4576]

And don't forget the needed repairs and the sheer manpower and other industries that would be needed to keep a monster like this going... not feasible at all, just another BS Ted Talk from some airhead that is only good at coming up with platitudes and no real ideas.

[@otivaeey]

I have an idea. Utilize all sunlight on rooftop by building plant boxes and plant suitable canopy horizontal spreading trees. Throw away water gutters because they'll be clogged up. Nevermind, I know it won't work. Nothing works

[@frankydsouza4895]

Trees is the easy way to solve carbon neutral

[@helbrassen4576]

Planting trees aren't a solution to the problem, trees absorb CO2 when they grow that is true, but once a tree grows old and die all that CO2 it's used to grow with will be released in to the atmosphere once more, planting trees isn't a solution that will help in any serious way.

[@joelonsdale]

If it were easy, there wouldn't be a problem!

[@08wolfeyes]

I wonder if it's at all possible to use something like this on a fleet of autonomous blimps? The Blimps could have sola power on the top and perhaps the side to power them, could navigate using GPS and use data to point to where the largest amount of C02 is for it to capture and focus on first. Something along these lines would, i hope at least, help to capture C02 higher up. Just a thought.

[@fjalics]

She should have a look at solar power towers. They produce a lot of heat directly. How about the Acatama desert in Chile? In the mean time, we need to replace burning coal with much cheaper wind and PV, and buy EV's.

[@carolinejeffery3290]

Im glad she emphasized that this is not a fix all solution, that we need to reduce carbon emissions primarily. However it is shocking she did not say that forests still need to exist, and need to be regenerated. This technology is not a synthetic 'forest' because forests cannot be reduced to simply carbon storage mechanisms. And real forests are not just the 'pretty' option. They might store less carbon per area but that is only a tiny fraction of the value of real forests. They are home to biodiversity, both plants and animals, they regulate our climate systems, and so much more.. And beyond all the 'services' they provide us, they have intrinsic value, they have a right to exist even if we cannot comprehend it.

[@GeographyCzar]

1) I think you will be shocked to discover how many, many, many people oppose the idea of being told what to do. If you can capture half of the CO2 emitted from burning a gallon of gasoline by adding $1 per gallon to the cost, paying that will be much more acceptable to those people than forcing them to use half as much gasoline. 2) Naturally, the implication of this math is that by adding $2 to the cost you can capture ALL of the CO2. Now zero behavior modification is required. That is going to be a much easier pill to swallow for those people who oppose the idea of being told what to do. 3) WHY do you propose a solution that includes forcing people to comply with your agenda? Is it really about "saving the planet"? Or is it really about telling people what to do?

[@rushdHBTS]

Have to Consider high concentration Zone of Co2 . Not average data of PPM .

[@EatOrLumby]

Sahara desert. Lots of heat, concentrated solar thermal, lots of land area2, find some hydrogen and terraform the desert as practice for Mars :)

[@huitzilopochtli4655]

It amazes me how we try to address a holistic problem with a specialized approach. We get physics engineers to calculate the amount of Sulphur dioxide needed to inject into the atmosphere to reduce the global temperatures, but we forget to ask the biologists about the possible impact on crop production due to the dimming effect that comes with that. Then we ask a different group of engineers to calculate the amount of iron dust to spread in the oceans in order to grow phytoplankton faster, yet again, we forget to do a research on the impacts of it on the entire marine ecosystem (turns out, it can cause dead zones and kill the oceans much faster than doing nothing). And this lovely lady is telling us that she needs to build a synthetic forest 500 times smaller than the Amazon to capture more CO2. But she is not telling you that the great Amazon forest is severely handicapped by human activity and in itself releases almost as much CO2 as it absorbs annually. www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/03/amazon-rainforest-ability-soak-carbon-dioxide-falling So, this is a highly misleading pitch. Not to mention that to build this artificial forest, you need to produce more heat first, need to use parts that come directly from the fossil fuel industry. What about maintenance? Environmental impacts? It looks like another good business project that will never lead anywhere, yet someone may get rich and famous in the process. But good try, keep researching. At this point technology is our only hope.

[@mrbluemaui]

Don't waste your time worrying about this. Just go on about your life and keep breathing in Oxygen and exhaling CO2. You see this whole scheme remains a scam to remove money from your pocket and humans from the planet. REMEMBER, THIS IS SPARTA! This psycho needs to go to jail. Maybe there, she will learn about her spiritual nature.

[@wilhelmschroeder7345]

@@mrbluemaui - Unnecessary complexity creates jobs.

[@wilhelmschroeder7345]

The cause of every problem is a solution.

[@Towoawawabo8]

That's the way to for real, as we move towards green energy, we can capture the co2 for a greater use until we get rid of those oil plants. However, we can just plant trees and be done with it. Trees doesn't need energy to grow, just plant them where we cut there from.

[@johannesswillery7855]

You are talking over the heads of Socialists.

[@mashunchingriruivah9857]

I'm late to this but; size of synthetic forests are greatly lower but we aren't thinking about the O2 replenishment from those forests.

[@unf3z4nt]

Hope we don't overshoot the 150ppm mark if we scale this up. At that point plants we know and love won't function properly.

[@Pyedr]

Don Hyon Should be fine, pending the development of another futuristic tech called an "off switch"...as science-fictiony as that sounds.

[@midnight8341]

You do realize that these factories won't work any longer if you simply switched them off, right?

[@tuoratoo]

At CO2 150 ppm greenosphere dies.

[@andrewarmstrong8651]

Sound like she’s selling a new iphone

[@Dollapfin]

Andrew Armstrong lmao

[@paulsmith1981]

She is selling snake oil.

[@kirolloshalim1533]

Well I'm buying it, what she's saying

[@lantosioandaniel6636]

@@kirolloshalim1533 Iphones are crap so I am not buying it LOL

[@canadiannuclearman]

plant Bamboo, it grows fast.

[@Blackgeoff1]

How about plant more food?

[@helbrassen4576]

Planting trees/plants aren't a solution to the problem, trees absorb CO2 when they grow that is true, but once a tree grows old and die all that CO2 it's used to grow with will be released in to the atmosphere once more, planting trees isn't a solution that will help in any serious way.

[@adarshchauhan1724]

@@helbrassen4576 and it takes more than thousand years to die a tree

[@wompbozer3939]

Kill the trees then.

[@konthaijaidee3035]

@@wompbozer3939 ha ha ha

[@phillybruce]

I live near Huntsville AL where Global Thermostat had a local engineering company build there prototype plant. I went by to take a look at it the day before yesterday. An engineer with the company said the Global Thermostat never paid them to build it and that they never got anywhere near the cost per tone levels that Global Thermostat was claiming. So, the plant is now just a well designed hunk of scrap. He did say that other carbon capture companies are more realistic.

[@xyzsame4081]

Meanwhile black locust is growing like weed in certain areas (I seem to remember it can fix nitrogen from the air, that gives it an edge over other trees. Once it decomposes it becomes good compost). As it is invasive in some parts of the U.S. it has to be managed, one could plant other trees instead to have a good mix between native and exotic species - that would be jobs for rural folks that like the outdoors. Black locust makes for excellent fence posts, it does not rot in soil. I think it also grows in AL.

[@TheFlip8892]

Why do we not regulate large companies/plants to create a different means to dispense co2 waste, webbing out into forested areas created by the companies that can not only contribute to removing carbons but aid in the green movement, forcing the companies to redistribute profits towards the problems they contribute to. + O2 - CO2

[@alfredschembri4903]

Stop cutting down our forests, and plant trees.

[@thatfoo6681]

Whos here because of the 100 million 🤣

[@cristoz8691]

I'm here to save the world. The 100 M are just my tool

[@Eric-ye5yz]

Let me see if I understand this, we can use this to take co2 out of the air, but we must use energy created by what ? that will create more co2

[@alexiaroberts1012]

Renewable energy sources

[@Tom--Ace]

She covered it in the video

[@damaliamarsi2006]

She lost me at "400 parts per million means for every 400 parts of co2 we have another million of oxygen and nitrogen. It actually means that for every 400 parts of co2 we have 999,600 parts other stuff which includes oxygen, nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and other trace gases. By her math we have 1,000,000 oxygen molecules, 1,000,000 nitrogen molecules and 400 co2 molecules. At 400 parts per million we freaking need to put more in. Plants need it and plants= food, so more co2 = more plant food. Why are we trying to remove it. It is a trace gas, and very important to plants. Why are we as humans so dumb. All that coal in the ground is trapped co2 that plants USED to have available. Same with oil. Plants need Co2. This whole concept of spending trillions of effort to do essentially nothing just seems like a big waste.

[@Jim54_]

We should reuse hydroelectric plants to power stations like these, while moving the grid towards Nuclear energy. Also, to those in the comments section berating carbon capture technology, I would point out that no amount of trees is going to capture all the carbon we burned from deposits in which it was stored safely for millennia. One plant over a short period of time won’t fix the problem, but it’s a start.

[@wilhelmschroeder7345]

My computer is heating up as I read all these wonderful solutions.

[@BuioPestato]

To all the ones that say "plant trees" I may ask "where?"

[@josephcoon5809]

Subterranean hemp farms. Hemp sequesters CO2 much faster than trees, and advances in hemp plastics, woods, and cretes are being made every year. Hemp based construction materials can be used to construct submarine scaffolding to cultivate multi-tiered kelp forests. Kelp can be harvested to be used as fertilizer for the hemp farms. Solar arrays can capture the Sun’s full spectrum and use that energy to power just four frequencies of LEDs that activate the chloroplasts in hemp and kelp. Plenty of space underground, and even more space in the oceans. On top of the materials industry that the hemp would impact, the diversity in a kelp forest biome is amazing.

[@DidivsIvlianvs]

Your street, your yard, your roof

[@DidivsIvlianvs]

Your street, your yard, your roof

[@fudgedogbannana]

Wherever there are no trees

[@spiritzweispirit1st638]

She's Awesome! This Is The Most Articulate' Concise and Beautifully Expressed Ted Talk on Climate Managment I've Ever Seen On KZbin! Just Superb! 🌈🌎🌍🌏👍

[@climaterealistsofaustralia7758]

@@thomaspaine5601 Dead right - she is indeed an idiot. Provided no evidence whatsoever up front proving that CO2 is a pollutant & the primary driver of so called Global Warming. CO2 has been demonized by a bunch of EcoZealouts & a wide assortment of Carpetbaggers out to make a quick buck out of a miniscule, invisible trace gas necessary for life on earth. The world has gone mad with this crazy, delusional nonsense about carbon dioxide.

[@thomaspaine5601]

@@climaterealistsofaustralia7758 totally agree. CO2 of all things! What's next, water?

[@foxlies0106]

She is shilling for energy industry, unfortunately. Your tax dollars helping Exxon et al keep polluting. She has no shame.

[@earlvickery8413]

I think we need to reduce the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to 150 PPM. This will reduce all CO2 problems.... and life!

[@WoRldLoveNow]

co2 is not a problem to us in any way shape of form.