According to the information provided, algae could play a crucial role in our efforts to combat climate change. Here are the key recommendations outlined: Capture coal plant CO2 emissions: By capturing up to 50% of global CO2 emissions from coal plants and using them to cultivate algae, we can effectively remove a significant portion of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Feed algae to cattle: Incorporating algae into cattle feed can reduce methane emissions from livestock by as much as 90%, addressing another major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Treat wastewater nitrates into algae: Utilizing algae to process wastewater nitrates can provide a valuable source of animal feed and biofuel, while also sequestering up to 15 gigatons of CO2 per year. Implement "fake whale feces" ocean fertilization: By distributing synthetic whale feces into the oceans, researchers believe they can stimulate the growth of algae and potentially sequester up to 35 gigatons of CO2 per year. Establish near-ocean algae farms: Cultivating algae in farms located near the ocean can help mummify and sequester up to 10 gigatons of CO2 per year. Mineralize and sequester toxic algae blooms: Capturing and storing the carbon from harmful algae blooms could potentially remove an additional 1 gigaton of CO2 per year. Harness the carbon sequestration potential of kelp (macroalgae): Leveraging the CO2 sequestration capabilities of kelp could contribute an estimated 1 gigaton of CO2 removal per year. Thanks Geo Girl for promoting deep ocean fertilization for algae!
Silicates was the derogatory nickname for AI robots in the unfortunately short-lived 1996 Sci-Fi TV-series "Space: Above And Beyond" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space:_Above_and_Beyond).
You're the best GG. Have just landed a great job as head of Earth Science at a good school in Sydney. I'm thinking to set up sessions for the students who want to be active on the climate front to hold workshops for info and action on priorities and pro-active events and further actions. This is where your videos will be invaluable as educational material. Of course this has to go past the executive first. Though I'm sure this will be a low hurdle. Thanks so much for the great work and effort you put into these episodes, which, by the way, will be part of the students curricular and extra-curricular homework.
Early 1960s to early 1990s : Is there really climate change? Mid-1990s to mid-2000s : Yes, there is. Let us try to prevent it. Since the mid-2000s : It is here. Now we have no choice but to adapt to it.
Thank you so much, you're such a great teacher. This is taught in a way to be accessible for all ages while being quite thorough! I do wonder if rather than using the word "combating" climate change, what do you think of saying "healing earth's injuries", or "restoring balance", or something along those lines? Then it is clear that this is caretaking and not violent.
Bravo, BRAVO! For speaking up on regen-agriculture, or compost and mulch as I call it 😄 thank you. As well as carbon sequestration there are other (profound) benefits; in terms of soil health and I am still astonished by the boost in health and productivity I see in plants grown this (natural) way. Thank you again GG 🙂
Thanks Dr. Rachel, excellent information. I’ve been contemplating replacing my old black roof with a white one, now I have another good reason for it. Last night I startled some dear nibbling on the new growth on my roses and the blueberry bush. They’re spreading organic material out into the wild with little organic pellets. Need to spread some of my worm composted castings under these plants. I was about to lower the shade and lock the door when I found myself in a staring contest with a doe. There was 4 dear nibbling away at my shrubbery. I debated shooing them away but decided I was trespassing into their environment so I tried to lower the blinds slowly, but they did run off. I’m sure they’ll be back, they always seem to return. My shrubbery will recover. Thanks again!
Rachel grew up in a family where the beavers deer raccoons insects dogs cats snakes and microbes were prioritized over garden aesthetics so good for you!
I think it's interesting to hear a geology take on carbon sequestration, and yes, seaweed is awesome, I think it's even in a lot of cosmetics. I just wanted to mention that aforestation and soil regeneration don't just store carbon, they also increase resilience to extreme weather caused by climate change. it also has a direct cooling effect from increased evapotranspiration. They're interesting not because they're super efficient but because done well the carbon sequestration is practically just a byproduct.
As you're talking about the methods 33:00 of carbon sequestration I'm thinking also about running another exec. hurdle to transform the school grounds with soil conditioning, soil manufacture, planting and design. In a former life I was doing Landscape Conservation. I think those skills may come in very handy once again. Cheers GG.
Tx for an excellent presentation - very interesting. Unlike the human tech, nature- based solutions provide a multitude of other benefits... Mangrove forests & peatlands sequester far more carbon than forests, and tropical forests store more carbon than temperate & boreal forests. Mangrove forests also provide nurseries for many fish & other marine species, and protect the land from the action of the sea, especially during storms. Forests also support & enhance biodiversity, manage the wateŕ cycle and provide many materials for human activities, awa for recreation, tourism & wellness (must be sustainable). Kelp / seaweed is awesome. We already use it in many products and is a great fertilizer. Kelp forests also protect the land from the action of the sea by breaking up waves before they reach the shore. They also hide many species from predators like sharks. Sea otters will tangle themselves up in kelp so that they don't drift out to sea while they take a nap. Nature provides EVERYTHING we need - and more - FOR FREE! No price bulking or shrinkflation, no hidden fees, no VAT or sales tax & no profiteering!
Some people are developing infrared reflective cooling paints that reflect light in frequencies that won't bounce back off the ionosphere. Theoretically it can provide electricity free air-conditioning.
Thank you as always. “We can’t grow rocks!” I always chuckle when an advertisement from Exxon interrupts touting “carbon capture for heavy industry - let’s deliver.” I suppose carbon capture is a positive, but it’s NOT carbon sequestration. “Carbon capture” looks to me more like a trick by the fossil fuel industry to make it look like they’re doing something so keep buying our stuff. Anyway, thank you for the excellent, informative lecture.
thank you Dr R Phillips,Geo Girl, for a very comprehensible and illuminating exposition on the imbalance in the Carbon cycle and how we might go about fixing it! Perhaps it`s worth pointing out that as human population has grown so has this problem and so holding our population constant by say having one kid for mum and one kid for dad would help to stabilise this problem. Something to chew on. John lampe,sunny Perth, Western Australia.
Hi! The only problem with "Plant more trees!" is you have to be careful what you plant and where you plant it. Fast growing trees are good short-term C storage but you need slower growing trees for long-term C storage. Also, there is a big difference between planting native plants, non-native plants which harmonize with the area, and invasive plants or plants which are useless to local wildlife. Also, there's a tendency to think "just" planting more trees will solve the problem. Nope. But of course other possibilities are discussed in this video. 🙂 Happy Earth Day! 🌎
@@GEOGIRL Trees planted the wrong distance from your house can damage your foundation &/or roof, too. (Source: husband works in insurance. Trust me, the insurance companies 100% know climate change is real). So... Trees are awesome, but plant with care. 🌲 _Braiding Sweetgrass_ is a fantastic book. 😊
@@StabilisingGlobalTemperatureIt depends. Not all land has plants growing on it. Annuals die every year, so they're extremely temporary C storage. Perennials also die back, although their roots remain. With shrubs & bushes, it depends on now they grow, their lifespan, etc. Trees are usually longer term C storage than most other types of plants.
Where I live, hot summers are killing our native species. We need to replace our conifers with palm trees. That's an exaggeration, but we are looking at more drought tolerant plants.
Just growing trees isn't enough - for this purpose we specifically want to grow tree species that are fast growing and sequester a high amount of carbon. Then we want to bury those trees in mines, bogs, and oceans so that the carbon in them is no longer in the carbon cycle.
Thank you for making this video. Unfortunately we seem to be destroying the biosphere that we need to stabilise the climate. The abrupt climate change that we are causing is going to interfere with our agriculture eventually, which relies on predictable and non-extreme weather. Long term, over hundreds and thousands of years, the world will green with all of the carbon we are putting in to the atmosphere, and the increased weathering and erosion from extreme weather and sea level rise will increase carbon drawdown. But in the short term it's going to be bad news for us. I don't know why more people aren't talking about this.
I get the point that renewable energy isn't good enough because we need to remove carbon and sequester it. Some of the ideas in this video would take a million years. Geo Girl stuff :) I'll have to re-watch this video a few times. I have a lot of trees on my property and I'm not sure what I can do about soil health for all of them. Wish I had some kind of meter to measure progress or regress. If I believe in what we can practically do with trees for longer-term carbon sequestration, I will spread the idea far and wide. Will rewatch a few times. Information firehose.
Sadly, or realistically, renewable energy is not working as great as proponents want us to believe. Real world data show that these mostly reduce coal and gas use, while it is difficult to achieve complete replacement. We want complete replacement and fast- like France achieved in about 10years with electricity already 40years ago using nuclear power. Decomposition of silicates can be greatly enhanced by just milling the rocks and placing fine sand in proper places. Together with obvious soil restoration and other actions we could really do more than just slap solar panels on every surface available. Sorry for ranting- good and informative video and channel!
How should we classify shells formed by animals? Are shells the equivalent of rocks? It seems animals like oysters and corals form “rock” at a rapid rate, comparatively. Could we sequester carbon via restoring oyster reefs and coral reefs?
Thanks for the video! I love learning stuff. Question: Do algae blooms in rivers and lakes help with carbon sequestration? I always heard of them as problematic.
Yes, they do, but they have the same consequences as ocean fertilization algal blooms. They cause eutrophication, which creates really poor conditions for animal/plant ecosystems, such that pretty much the only thing that can live there is the algae, which reduces biodiversity and overall ecosystem health. That's why one would need to manually mix the waters so they don't get stagnant enough to allow eutrophication and anoxia. Hope that makes sense! :)
People tend to overestimate the amount of Carbon that can be sequestered by the biosphere in the short term. A small back-of-the-envelope calculation: Humanity has put about 270 billion tons of pure Carbon into the atmosphere since 1900, as the Carbon Dioxide content has increased during the last 124 years from 270 ppm to 410 ppm. Living plants usually contain 15% Carbon. All harvests of the world in a year, taken together, are about 5 billion tons of plant mass, equivalent to 0.75 billion tons of Carbon. It would take the harvest of 360 years to sequester all that additional carbon - that means: We don't eat for 360 years, and we turn the whole harvest into coal. Basically, we put three times the carbon into the atmosphere each year than we sequester by growing plants - and then we use the plants and turn them back into carbon dioxide.
Do you have a video where you go into more detail about the oxygen content in relation to atmospheric co2? Or a source for me to read further? Edit: Why is it important to combat the o2 loss in the atmosphere? If co2 rises fromm 300 to 600 ppm, should o2 not just decrease 300ppm? So from 209,460 ppm to 209,160 ppm?
11:16 there was an idea i heard on a ted talk to reverse desertification by having heard animals graze in desert areas large herds and the manure combined somehow can restore that soil? A lot of these solutions seem like they rely on the cooperation of a lot of different kinds of people though and that seems like the biggest barrier to change in my opinion.
@GeoGirl How does soil compaction affect the cycles, the Carbon cycle in particular? There is a lot of soil compaction going on in our farmlands. Can you do a video about that?
I always feel there is a very important part of CO2 sequestration that is always omitted. Scale. Once I tried to calculate how many trees we should plant to undo a year's worth of emissions and it was just crazy. Countries worth of land mass should be forested for just one year of emissions. So to me, any non technological system seems doomed to fail, simply for the matter of scale.
Could you do a video about geological sources of hydrogen? I've heard there are some companies trying to make gas wells for it, to make hydrogen cheaper than it would be from electrolysis or from burning methane.
Early 1960s to early 1990s : Is there really climate change? Mid-1990s to mid-2000s : Yes, there is. Let us try to prevent it. Since the mid-2000s : It is here. Now we have no choice but to adapt to it.
Sequester sounds like a sub-class of Inquisitor. Oh well, gaming can feed the algorithm, too. More importantly, if we did artificial upwelling, downwelling, we would need a LOT of energy to move all that water. Millions of tons? Billions? IDK. But we would have to pump it all several kms up and down. Building and powering some huge pump islands would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?
Just a thought. Ocean fertilization may sequester carbon slowly, but combine that with reduced carbon emissions by using solar and wind energy. Maybe not enough but it sounds like a net positive for the goal of a human-compatible Earth climate.
This is a good thought. The shortcoming is that these methods of carbon sequestration *all* require even more energy. I know that you addressed this, but we don't even produce enough renewable energy for primary "human needs" yet...
Hello, thank you for a fascinating video. I do have some questions. 1. Can we use burial and pressure to try to speed up the creation of new rock. As an example of what I'm thinking, take one of those deep open pit mines, and fill it with tons of dead plant material, adding a cap rock to the mix every so many meters of biological materials. 2. Would such a method using deep burial and pressure speed up the process somewhat? I also did some preliminary research of my own into coal, lignite, oil shale, and/or black shale. Apparently these rocks and how they form could be crucial to our defeating climate change. (If we can find artificial ways of forming these types of rocks and then burying them under some kind of cap rock to keep the hydrocarbons down there. we could theoretically speed up the uptake of carbon by the geological sphere.) 3Do you think we could induce the creation of these rock types and then place them where they won't leak out for thousands of years?
What do you think about C Sequestration w/r/t a singular solution to human-caused climate change? Meaning, C Sequestration being able to create a human carbon cycle that allows us to keep using CO2-emitting energy technologies. My understanding is this is completely untenable, but I have only a small understanding of these systems, so I'd be curious how a person with more expertise in this issue sees such an idea. I've definitely heard a lot of people say it is tenable. Does it need to be alongside carbon-free energy creation? Also, is reforestation a long-term solution, or is it just a short term bandaid to allow for a buffer period for us to advance technologies to a longer term solution? Since trees give up their sequestered C when they die, some people I know are very skeptical it will work for more than a few decades, especially with the increases in forest fires that are expected. Again, that makes sense to me, but I'm not an expert, so I'd be interested if there's other things going on that I'm not aware of that would change this.
There is only one certainty with the proposed "climate fixes". We are going to pay for them. Makes some people very.... 🤑🤑🤑 And it's going to be the same people (corporations really) whom already profit from the pollution Socrates and friends: ‘Wealth is addictive. The rich will destroy society to get richer’ Which is why Our politicians are interchangeable figureheads on the pirate ships of the Corporatocracy Empire (maybe read this 3 times so the meaning sinks in a bit). I still prefer geology to geopolitics/economics. Geology does not make me want to 🤮
Admirable and unrealistic. Merely provides more leeway for more industry and mining, fossiled fuels AND poisonous elements. Modern tech will collapse, after oil and gas gone, a century, and coal alone makes 'alternate-energy' sources. All such attempts to slow tech damages merely alters the timeline a bit.
@@GEOGIRL I don't think fossil fuel workers want to be given jobs. True, they don't want their jobs taken away, but they certainly do not want to work on renewables or permaculture, because their coworkers are like family. We have to force them on unemployment, give them time to change, and let others do renewables and permaculture. We can meet the IPCC schedule by closing fossil fuel companies, one at a time, until there are none left when we want the climate to stop getting worse.
Great question! The average temperature of Earth is not 'supposed' to be anything. We just know that rapid global change causes mass extinctions. We know this from examples in Earth's past, and we can measure the rate of change today and see that it is just as rapid as the climate change events in Earth's past that caused the largest mass extinction events of all time. We can also see that extinction rates are currently about 1000x the background rate over the last 500 million yrs based on the fossil record, and we can deduce from the types of life going extinct and how they are dying that it is the rapid global climate change that is causing it. So Earth can essentially be any temperature (within the limits of life on Earth), it is just that rapid change causes harm to life because life cannot adapt that quickly to climate and environmental changes. Hope that makes sense! :)
@@GEOGIRL Thank you for not even attempting to answer the question that I ACTUALLY asked. Linking your climate fear porn to PAST extinctions masks your true intent.
Reposting this from last week's video. Semms like a more appropriate place for it, given this video's subject Proposal. Build solar panels in deserts. Use the energy obtained to make hydrocarbons (methane, gasoline, diesel, kerosene, etc,.) from atmospheric CO2 and H2O. Use existing infrastructure to distribute those hydrocarbons to where they are used. Originally, such a system would be too costly to compete with existing fossil fuel technologies, so just subsidize the shit out of it. Use the money currently being wasted on subsidizing fossil fuel companies to do that. As the hydrocarbon producing solar farms expand, economies of scale kick in. Also, fossil fuels become more expensive as reserves are depleted. Fossil fuel companies keel over and die as a result. Good riddance. Users of hydrocarbon (cars, planes, home heating, manufacturing, etc,) barely notice the change. We seamlessly and painlessly switch from fossil fuels to 100% renewable. Everybody is happy. Except for the CEOs of the fossil fuel companies of course. But who cares about them? Addition to the proposal. Doing this would not add new carbon to the atmosphere, but would not in and of itself reduce the carbon already there. So once this new hydrocarbon producing infrastructure reached a sufficient size, a percentage of its output could be dedicated to simply removing carbon from the environment and transform it into something solid that could be removed permanently from the carbon cycle and safely stockpiled somewhere out of the way.
Ideally itd be nice to take advantage of this trend and build wetlands for people to get some sort of tax credit . Agw isnt real but these videos help alot. Go back to clay sometime to if youd like haha. Thanks for the videos !
You are too smart to seriously think carbon sequestration is going to do anything meaningful. The mascara on your adds a pleasant new element of sensuousness to your charming face.
I wonder how much carbon is in a twelve ounce glass bottle of Coca Cola. Never mind, go ahead and drink all the soda you want, unless Geo Girl says not to.
Are we absolutely certain without a doubt that climate change NEEDS to be combatted? There is absolutely NO possible scenario where doing nothing is better than “playing God” to “fix” it? This is not a criticism of those that want to try these methods, as I am sure their intentions are noble. This is a call for very careful deliberation. We don’t yet have the ability to predict the weather that well, and definitely can’t stop hurricanes or tornadoes. Assuming we can correctly manipulate climate to suit our very short and narrow concept of “normal” without failing or total disaster is the definition of hubris.
You're under-informed and missing the point. Claiming that trying to fix the climate is playing God. Flip the script mam. Today we're spewing 51 billion tons and rising of greenhouse gases pollution into our globally shared atmosphere annually. The very definition of playing God! We're 100% certain that these gases before fossil fuels were 280 parts per million of our atmosphere. Today combined greenhouse gases are 521. We're 100% certain and have been for 200 years of the ability of these gases to trap infrared heat. We measure the effect from satellites ground stations thousands of ocean monitors. We are certain the extra gases are trapping heat equivalent energy released by detonating 7 Hiroshima type nukes every single second for over thirty years. Again we've been "playing God" since steam engine was invented. Assuming you truly want to know the facts there's countless very good TH-cam pieces on the climate. Just look
According to the Global Carbon Project we do not even increase CO2 in the atmosphere, it all goes into the sinks, oceans and plants. This is just one angle among several other uncertainties. Very few people know what the actual unsolved questions are, i wonder if geo girl actually thinks about these things thoroughly.
@@nyoodmono4681 You keep posting the same nonsense. “We do not increase CO2 in the atmosphere” - what on earth are you on about? How do you explain it is now 420ppm? This isn’t exactly an obscure piece of information. Arguably, we have been playing god for a while now by releasing all this carbon from the geosphere to the atmosphere. I agree though that having messed with the carbon cycle in such a fundamental way; we should make us wary of possible uninteded consequences of our actions. I think this is especially true when it comes to solar management solutions (increasing albedo by discharging sulfur particles in the atmosphere).
@nyoodmono4681 You just explained the problem that I discuss in my induced global warming (th-cam.com/video/WM-C728HoRA/w-d-xo.html) at about 20 mins in; I go over how the hydrosphere (ocean) and biosphere (plants) take up the atmospheric CO2 we are releasing, just as you said, however, this is not good because it does not bring back balance to the carbon cycle since we did not originally get the carbon from the hydrosphere or biosphere. We got the carbon from the geosphere (rocks/fossil fuels), so to bring back balance, we need to put it back in the geosphere. Since it is going into the hydrosphere & biosphere, it is causing all sorts of harm like ocean acidification, eutrophication/harmful algal blooms, ocean anoxia/lack of oxygen, etc. so we really need to sequester it from both the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and even try to move it from going into harmful biospheric sinks like certain types of algae, into more healthy biospheric sinks like trees, soil microbes, and seaweed as discussed in this video :) Hope that makes sense!
@@GEOGIRL A problem? It would be the solution if all our extra CO2 was taken up by the sinks, regarding aprehended temperature changes due to accumulation in the atmosphere (ppm). The google message: "The term "climate change" refers to long-term changes in temperature and weather that are mainly caused by human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels" would be wrong. So this would be a mind blowing political problem. All the aprehensions you are sure of regarding "acidification" seem hasty to me, it is very hard to even slightly change the oceanic PH numbers globaly and the flora seems to adept quickly in many regards. In fact one could argue that the increased plant growth is beneficial. There are shells that live in sweet water, which is "acidic" compared to salt water. Finally even if we tried to sequester CO2, it is an impossible task, hybris again imo. Impossible to get near the magnitude that the global flora adepts and the gigatons that are processed here. Since you talk a lot of the primtive times too, a comparison of what has happened in past ice ages would make sense. In the Ordovician and during the Karoo ice ages, there was way more CO2 absorbed in the cold oceans. 2000-3000ppm. So it only makes sense that this will happen now when we artificaly increase the CO2. I can agree that we have to stay cautious since the emissions are an "experiment" we do.
Isn't it counter productive (and a bit arrogant) to attempt a "solution" for something that is ALWAYS changing? Just remember what happens when photosynthesis stops... youre book smart, but you lack all common sense. You related to John Kerry or Al Gore ?
climate changes naturally. We pump a lot of green house gas into the atmoshpere. We speed up the process. If we pumped less of it into the atmoshpere, climate change would be slower. Short sentences only so that you have a chance to understand them. And no, before you ask, I am not related to those politicians. But the question alone illustrates your ignorance pretty well.
As scientist you might want to explain how CO₂ or CH₄ can even present a problem. The masking factor alone is pretty large. You can agree with most of the below. CO₂ (carbon dioxide) @ 442ppm, specific gravity 1.5, has obesity issues, Gravity sucks, making it a ground hugger by design. CH₄ (methane) @ 1.7 ppm, specific gravity .554, volatile, breaks down in contact with O₂ and O₃ (@ 21% of our atmosphere). H₂O (as water vapour) @ ±21,000ppm, is by a factor of 95-98% the most dominant GHG.
climate changes naturally. We pump a lot of green house gas into the atmoshpere. We speed up the process. If we pumped less of it into the atmoshpere, climate change would be slower. Short sentences only so that you have a chance to understand them. That's how CO₂ or CH₄ can present a problem.
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TH-cam please give these videos a wider audience, the education she provides is in everyone's best interest. Thanks.
gotta click that like button.
Thank you so much, I am so glad you appreciate the info in the video! :)
Thumb up video and comment for the algorithm
I wholeheartedly agree!🙂
According to the information provided, algae could play a crucial role in our efforts to combat climate change. Here are the key recommendations outlined:
Capture coal plant CO2 emissions: By capturing up to 50% of global CO2 emissions from coal plants and using them to cultivate algae, we can effectively remove a significant portion of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
Feed algae to cattle: Incorporating algae into cattle feed can reduce methane emissions from livestock by as much as 90%, addressing another major source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Treat wastewater nitrates into algae: Utilizing algae to process wastewater nitrates can provide a valuable source of animal feed and biofuel, while also sequestering up to 15 gigatons of CO2 per year.
Implement "fake whale feces" ocean fertilization: By distributing synthetic whale feces into the oceans, researchers believe they can stimulate the growth of algae and potentially sequester up to 35 gigatons of CO2 per year.
Establish near-ocean algae farms: Cultivating algae in farms located near the ocean can help mummify and sequester up to 10 gigatons of CO2 per year.
Mineralize and sequester toxic algae blooms: Capturing and storing the carbon from harmful algae blooms could potentially remove an additional 1 gigaton of CO2 per year.
Harness the carbon sequestration potential of kelp (macroalgae): Leveraging the CO2 sequestration capabilities of kelp could contribute an estimated 1 gigaton of CO2 removal per year.
Thanks Geo Girl for promoting deep ocean fertilization for algae!
Rachel 🚲, This video 🎞 is absolutely packed with info. Solid work 💪! Thank you.
11:42 “Silicate Weathering”….”don’t worry, I’m going to break it down” - I love accidental jokes! ❤😂
Lol I know right! I noticed that during editing and I love it 😂
@@GEOGIRL
Yes, always intend your puns!
Silicates was the derogatory nickname for AI robots in the unfortunately short-lived 1996 Sci-Fi TV-series "Space: Above And Beyond" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space:_Above_and_Beyond).
Hey there, thank you for having the courage to post this. It needs to be said/talked about. Thanks again! 🍻
Excellent Dr geo girl good explanation about Silicate weathering thank you
You're the best GG.
Have just landed a great job as head of Earth Science at a good school in Sydney. I'm thinking to set up sessions for the students who want to be active on the climate front to hold workshops for info and action on priorities and pro-active events and further actions. This is where your videos will be invaluable as educational material.
Of course this has to go past the executive first. Though I'm sure this will be a low hurdle.
Thanks so much for the great work and effort you put into these episodes, which, by the way, will be part of the students curricular and extra-curricular homework.
Early 1960s to early 1990s : Is there really climate change?
Mid-1990s to mid-2000s : Yes, there is. Let us try to prevent it.
Since the mid-2000s : It is here. Now we have no choice but to adapt to it.
Thank you Dr Phillips.
Thank you so much, you're such a great teacher. This is taught in a way to be accessible for all ages while being quite thorough! I do wonder if rather than using the word "combating" climate change, what do you think of saying "healing earth's injuries", or "restoring balance", or something along those lines? Then it is clear that this is caretaking and not violent.
Bravo, BRAVO! For speaking up on regen-agriculture, or compost and mulch as I call it 😄 thank you. As well as carbon sequestration there are other (profound) benefits; in terms of soil health and I am still astonished by the boost in health and productivity I see in plants grown this (natural) way. Thank you again GG 🙂
Thanks Dr. Rachel, excellent information. I’ve been contemplating replacing my old black roof with a white one, now I have another good reason for it.
Last night I startled some dear nibbling on the new growth on my roses and the blueberry bush. They’re spreading organic material out into the wild with little organic pellets. Need to spread some of my worm composted castings under these plants. I was about to lower the shade and lock the door when I found myself in a staring contest with a doe. There was 4 dear nibbling away at my shrubbery. I debated shooing them away but decided I was trespassing into their environment so I tried to lower the blinds slowly, but they did run off. I’m sure they’ll be back, they always seem to return.
My shrubbery will recover.
Thanks again!
Yay! Go with the white roof, that would be great! :D
Rachel grew up in a family where the beavers deer raccoons insects dogs cats snakes and microbes were prioritized over garden aesthetics so good for you!
I think it's interesting to hear a geology take on carbon sequestration, and yes, seaweed is awesome, I think it's even in a lot of cosmetics.
I just wanted to mention that aforestation and soil regeneration don't just store carbon, they also increase resilience to extreme weather caused by climate change. it also has a direct cooling effect from increased evapotranspiration. They're interesting not because they're super efficient but because done well the carbon sequestration is practically just a byproduct.
Very well explained thanks for the information very professional...
As you're talking about the methods 33:00 of carbon sequestration I'm thinking also about running another exec. hurdle to transform the school grounds with soil conditioning, soil manufacture, planting and design. In a former life I was doing Landscape Conservation. I think those skills may come in very handy once again.
Cheers GG.
Thank you Dr Rachel. I enjoyed this video! Keep them coming, as you can.
Tx for an excellent presentation - very interesting.
Unlike the human tech, nature- based solutions provide a multitude of other benefits...
Mangrove forests & peatlands sequester far more carbon than forests, and tropical forests store more carbon than temperate & boreal forests. Mangrove forests also provide nurseries for many fish & other marine species, and protect the land from the action of the sea, especially during storms.
Forests also support & enhance biodiversity, manage the wateŕ cycle and provide many materials for human activities, awa for recreation, tourism & wellness (must be sustainable).
Kelp / seaweed is awesome. We already use it in many products and is a great fertilizer. Kelp forests also protect the land from the action of the sea by breaking up waves before they reach the shore. They also hide many species from predators like sharks. Sea otters will tangle themselves up in kelp so that they don't drift out to sea while they take a nap.
Nature provides EVERYTHING we need - and more - FOR FREE! No price bulking or shrinkflation, no hidden fees, no VAT or sales tax & no profiteering!
Some people are developing infrared reflective cooling paints that reflect light in frequencies that won't bounce back off the ionosphere. Theoretically it can provide electricity free air-conditioning.
Don't forget organix fertilization of rivers like the amazon river!
Thank you as always. “We can’t grow rocks!” I always chuckle when an advertisement from Exxon interrupts touting “carbon capture for heavy industry - let’s deliver.” I suppose carbon capture is a positive, but it’s NOT carbon sequestration. “Carbon capture” looks to me more like a trick by the fossil fuel industry to make it look like they’re doing something so keep buying our stuff. Anyway, thank you for the excellent, informative lecture.
Thanks!
Thanks so much! :D
thank you Dr R Phillips,Geo Girl, for a very comprehensible and illuminating exposition on the imbalance in the Carbon cycle and how we might go about fixing it! Perhaps it`s worth pointing out that as human population has grown so has this problem and so holding our population constant by say having one kid for mum and one kid for dad would help to stabilise this problem. Something to chew on. John lampe,sunny Perth, Western Australia.
Hi! The only problem with "Plant more trees!" is you have to be careful what you plant and where you plant it. Fast growing trees are good short-term C storage but you need slower growing trees for long-term C storage. Also, there is a big difference between planting native plants, non-native plants which harmonize with the area, and invasive plants or plants which are useless to local wildlife.
Also, there's a tendency to think "just" planting more trees will solve the problem. Nope. But of course other possibilities are discussed in this video. 🙂 Happy Earth Day! 🌎
Could not agree more! Trees will not solve all our problems! :)
@@GEOGIRL Trees planted the wrong distance from your house can damage your foundation &/or roof, too. (Source: husband works in insurance. Trust me, the insurance companies 100% know climate change is real). So... Trees are awesome, but plant with care. 🌲
_Braiding Sweetgrass_ is a fantastic book. 😊
Does planting trees make any sense anyway? For a piece of land there would have been plants growing there anyway, absorbing CO2.
@@StabilisingGlobalTemperatureIt depends. Not all land has plants growing on it. Annuals die every year, so they're extremely temporary C storage. Perennials also die back, although their roots remain. With shrubs & bushes, it depends on now they grow, their lifespan, etc. Trees are usually longer term C storage than most other types of plants.
Where I live, hot summers are killing our native species. We need to replace our conifers with palm trees. That's an exaggeration, but we are looking at more drought tolerant plants.
Thank you so much for your hard work and great presentation of this information!😊👏
Brace yourself for the comments. Keep it up!
Lol I always hate looking at the comments one my climate-related videos, but what I hate more is that I have to hate it :/
@@GEOGIRL
That's an algorithm we need to change.
TH-cam ought to have a way to manage comments to prioritize positive ones.
@jimthain8777 all you zealots want to censor speech because you can't defend climate cult ideology otherwise.
A must view podcast. TY.
Just growing trees isn't enough - for this purpose we specifically want to grow tree species that are fast growing and sequester a high amount of carbon. Then we want to bury those trees in mines, bogs, and oceans so that the carbon in them is no longer in the carbon cycle.
What a great space to record! love the rocks, furniture, and that decorative yet load bearing wall.
Lets get this trending!!!
Another brilliant video. Thank you!
Thank you for making this video. Unfortunately we seem to be destroying the biosphere that we need to stabilise the climate. The abrupt climate change that we are causing is going to interfere with our agriculture eventually, which relies on predictable and non-extreme weather. Long term, over hundreds and thousands of years, the world will green with all of the carbon we are putting in to the atmosphere, and the increased weathering and erosion from extreme weather and sea level rise will increase carbon drawdown. But in the short term it's going to be bad news for us. I don't know why more people aren't talking about this.
I get the point that renewable energy isn't good enough because we need to remove carbon and sequester it. Some of the ideas in this video would take a million years. Geo Girl stuff :) I'll have to re-watch this video a few times. I have a lot of trees on my property and I'm not sure what I can do about soil health for all of them. Wish I had some kind of meter to measure progress or regress. If I believe in what we can practically do with trees for longer-term carbon sequestration, I will spread the idea far and wide. Will rewatch a few times. Information firehose.
Sadly, or realistically, renewable energy is not working as great as proponents want us to believe. Real world data show that these mostly reduce coal and gas use, while it is difficult to achieve complete replacement. We want complete replacement and fast- like France achieved in about 10years with electricity already 40years ago using nuclear power. Decomposition of silicates can be greatly enhanced by just milling the rocks and placing fine sand in proper places. Together with obvious soil restoration and other actions we could really do more than just slap solar panels on every surface available. Sorry for ranting- good and informative video and channel!
How should we classify shells formed by animals? Are shells the equivalent of rocks? It seems animals like oysters and corals form “rock” at a rapid rate, comparatively. Could we sequester carbon via restoring oyster reefs and coral reefs?
hi dr.Rachel please tell me about your suggestion for new geology student
19:45 CAT!
Thanks for the video! I love learning stuff. Question: Do algae blooms in rivers and lakes help with carbon sequestration? I always heard of them as problematic.
Yes, they do, but they have the same consequences as ocean fertilization algal blooms. They cause eutrophication, which creates really poor conditions for animal/plant ecosystems, such that pretty much the only thing that can live there is the algae, which reduces biodiversity and overall ecosystem health. That's why one would need to manually mix the waters so they don't get stagnant enough to allow eutrophication and anoxia. Hope that makes sense! :)
@@GEOGIRL Yes indeed! Thanks!
In regards to soil degradation, Rachel, what about "No till" farming of crops?
All politicians should see this.
People tend to overestimate the amount of Carbon that can be sequestered by the biosphere in the short term.
A small back-of-the-envelope calculation:
Humanity has put about 270 billion tons of pure Carbon into the atmosphere since 1900, as the Carbon Dioxide content has increased during the last 124 years from 270 ppm to 410 ppm.
Living plants usually contain 15% Carbon.
All harvests of the world in a year, taken together, are about 5 billion tons of plant mass, equivalent to 0.75 billion tons of Carbon.
It would take the harvest of 360 years to sequester all that additional carbon - that means: We don't eat for 360 years, and we turn the whole harvest into coal. Basically, we put three times the carbon into the atmosphere each year than we sequester by growing plants - and then we use the plants and turn them back into carbon dioxide.
Do you have a video where you go into more detail about the oxygen content in relation to atmospheric co2? Or a source for me to read further?
Edit: Why is it important to combat the o2 loss in the atmosphere? If co2 rises fromm 300 to 600 ppm, should o2 not just decrease 300ppm? So from 209,460 ppm to 209,160 ppm?
Very informative. Keep going!
11:16 there was an idea i heard on a ted talk to reverse desertification by having heard animals graze in desert areas large herds and the manure combined somehow can restore that soil?
A lot of these solutions seem like they rely on the cooperation of a lot of different kinds of people though and that seems like the biggest barrier to change in my opinion.
@GeoGirl How does soil compaction affect the cycles, the Carbon cycle in particular? There is a lot of soil compaction going on in our farmlands. Can you do a video about that?
I always feel there is a very important part of CO2 sequestration that is always omitted. Scale. Once I tried to calculate how many trees we should plant to undo a year's worth of emissions and it was just crazy. Countries worth of land mass should be forested for just one year of emissions. So to me, any non technological system seems doomed to fail, simply for the matter of scale.
Do you create the graphic images, like with Silicate Weathering? They are all great!
Control the movement of earth's molecules. Create a system of molecular exchange that stabilizes the temperature.
Could you do a video about geological sources of hydrogen?
I've heard there are some companies trying to make gas wells for it, to make hydrogen cheaper than it would be from electrolysis or from burning methane.
Early 1960s to early 1990s : Is there really climate change?
Mid-1990s to mid-2000s : Yes, there is. Let us try to prevent it.
Since the mid-2000s : It is here. Now we have no choice but to adapt to it.
Sequester sounds like a sub-class of Inquisitor. Oh well, gaming can feed the algorithm, too.
More importantly, if we did artificial upwelling, downwelling, we would need a LOT of energy to move all that water. Millions of tons? Billions? IDK. But we would have to pump it all several kms up and down. Building and powering some huge pump islands would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?
Just a thought. Ocean fertilization may sequester carbon slowly, but combine that with reduced carbon emissions by using solar and wind energy. Maybe not enough but it sounds like a net positive for the goal of a human-compatible Earth climate.
We can reduce carbon emissions by building more nuclear power plants. (Why do people forget they have the lowest emissions of all of them?!)
This is a good thought. The shortcoming is that these methods of carbon sequestration *all* require even more energy. I know that you addressed this, but we don't even produce enough renewable energy for primary "human needs" yet...
What about marshes and swamps? Some say they store carbon faster for thousands of years.
What about growing bamboo for rapid carbon sequestration?
Hello, thank you for a fascinating video.
I do have some questions.
1. Can we use burial and pressure to try to speed up the creation of new rock.
As an example of what I'm thinking, take one of those deep open pit mines, and fill it with tons of dead plant material, adding a cap rock to the mix every so many meters of biological materials.
2. Would such a method using deep burial and pressure speed up the process somewhat?
I also did some preliminary research of my own into coal, lignite, oil shale, and/or black shale.
Apparently these rocks and how they form could be crucial to our defeating climate change.
(If we can find artificial ways of forming these types of rocks and then burying them under some kind of cap rock to keep the hydrocarbons down there.
we could theoretically speed up the uptake of carbon by the geological sphere.)
3Do you think we could induce the creation of these rock types and then place them where they won't leak out for thousands of years?
Thanks so much for this vid!
A test of the assumption that forests are a carbon sink, found that young newly planted forests are actually net carbon emitters for years.
What do you think about C Sequestration w/r/t a singular solution to human-caused climate change? Meaning, C Sequestration being able to create a human carbon cycle that allows us to keep using CO2-emitting energy technologies. My understanding is this is completely untenable, but I have only a small understanding of these systems, so I'd be curious how a person with more expertise in this issue sees such an idea. I've definitely heard a lot of people say it is tenable. Does it need to be alongside carbon-free energy creation?
Also, is reforestation a long-term solution, or is it just a short term bandaid to allow for a buffer period for us to advance technologies to a longer term solution? Since trees give up their sequestered C when they die, some people I know are very skeptical it will work for more than a few decades, especially with the increases in forest fires that are expected. Again, that makes sense to me, but I'm not an expert, so I'd be interested if there's other things going on that I'm not aware of that would change this.
Apparently we need trees which are big enough, live long and grow relatively fast. Genetically-modified sequoias or some conifers 🤓
"Stratospheric Aerosol Injection" would be a great name for Metal song. Just sayin'...
Makes sense, very dystopian. Imagine blocking out the sun and let it rain chalk water.. Madness
@@nyoodmono4681 White Rain. I guess it would be grey on our side...
still learning 5x5 Dail NM Territory
There is only one certainty with the proposed "climate fixes". We are going to pay for them.
Makes some people very.... 🤑🤑🤑
And it's going to be the same people (corporations really) whom already profit from the pollution
Socrates and friends: ‘Wealth is addictive. The rich will destroy society to get richer’
Which is why
Our politicians are interchangeable figureheads on the pirate ships of the Corporatocracy Empire (maybe read this 3 times so the meaning sinks in a bit).
I still prefer geology to geopolitics/economics. Geology does not make me want to 🤮
Drinking game: take a shot every time the word carbon is mentioned.
🌹🌹🌹
Plants love care heck they rely on co2 sunlight and water to grow
Admirable and unrealistic. Merely provides more leeway for more industry and mining, fossiled fuels AND poisonous elements. Modern tech will collapse, after oil and gas gone, a century, and coal alone makes 'alternate-energy' sources. All such attempts to slow tech damages merely alters the timeline a bit.
The atlantic ocean floor releases huge amounts of methane gas everyday .
I don't understand why you would even want to work harder. Just work less hard by putting fossil fuel workers in a timeout.
But one, lowering emissions won't solve the problem anymore, and two, we need to give those workers new jobs ;)
@@GEOGIRL I don't think fossil fuel workers want to be given jobs. True, they don't want their jobs taken away, but they certainly do not want to work on renewables or permaculture, because their coworkers are like family. We have to force them on unemployment, give them time to change, and let others do renewables and permaculture. We can meet the IPCC schedule by closing fossil fuel companies, one at a time, until there are none left when we want the climate to stop getting worse.
Project drawdown
So tell me, what is the average temperature of the earth supposed to be? How do you know? How did you develop your base line?
Great question! The average temperature of Earth is not 'supposed' to be anything. We just know that rapid global change causes mass extinctions. We know this from examples in Earth's past, and we can measure the rate of change today and see that it is just as rapid as the climate change events in Earth's past that caused the largest mass extinction events of all time. We can also see that extinction rates are currently about 1000x the background rate over the last 500 million yrs based on the fossil record, and we can deduce from the types of life going extinct and how they are dying that it is the rapid global climate change that is causing it.
So Earth can essentially be any temperature (within the limits of life on Earth), it is just that rapid change causes harm to life because life cannot adapt that quickly to climate and environmental changes. Hope that makes sense! :)
@@GEOGIRL Thank you for not even attempting to answer the question that I ACTUALLY asked. Linking your climate fear porn to PAST extinctions masks your true intent.
Reposting this from last week's video. Semms like a more appropriate place for it, given this video's subject
Proposal. Build solar panels in deserts. Use the energy obtained to make hydrocarbons (methane, gasoline, diesel, kerosene, etc,.) from atmospheric CO2 and H2O. Use existing infrastructure to distribute those hydrocarbons to where they are used. Originally, such a system would be too costly to compete with existing fossil fuel technologies, so just subsidize the shit out of it. Use the money currently being wasted on subsidizing fossil fuel companies to do that. As the hydrocarbon producing solar farms expand, economies of scale kick in. Also, fossil fuels become more expensive as reserves are depleted. Fossil fuel companies keel over and die as a result. Good riddance. Users of hydrocarbon (cars, planes, home heating, manufacturing, etc,) barely notice the change. We seamlessly and painlessly switch from fossil fuels to 100% renewable. Everybody is happy. Except for the CEOs of the fossil fuel companies of course. But who cares about them?
Addition to the proposal. Doing this would not add new carbon to the atmosphere, but would not in and of itself reduce the carbon already there. So once this new hydrocarbon producing infrastructure reached a sufficient size, a percentage of its output could be dedicated to simply removing carbon from the environment and transform it into something solid that could be removed permanently from the carbon cycle and safely stockpiled somewhere out of the way.
Climate is changing by the nature of it and can not be constant over time. You either adapt and cope or go the way of the dodo.
Ideally itd be nice to take advantage of this trend and build wetlands for people to get some sort of tax credit . Agw isnt real but these videos help alot. Go back to clay sometime to if youd like haha. Thanks for the videos !
I really enjoy your videos about basic geology but you are way out of your depth when comes to understanding the complexities of the global climate
You are too smart to seriously think carbon sequestration is going to do anything meaningful. The mascara on your adds a pleasant new element of sensuousness to your charming face.
I know that it can do something meaningful if employed at a large enough scale because we have seen it time and time again in Earth's history :)
More drilling. More oil. More AC.
I wonder how much carbon is in a twelve ounce glass bottle of Coca Cola. Never mind, go ahead and drink all the soda you want, unless Geo Girl says not to.
Are we absolutely certain without a doubt that climate change NEEDS to be combatted? There is absolutely NO possible scenario where doing nothing is better than “playing God” to “fix” it? This is not a criticism of those that want to try these methods, as I am sure their intentions are noble. This is a call for very careful deliberation. We don’t yet have the ability to predict the weather that well, and definitely can’t stop hurricanes or tornadoes. Assuming we can correctly manipulate climate to suit our very short and narrow concept of “normal” without failing or total disaster is the definition of hubris.
You're under-informed and missing the point. Claiming that trying to fix the climate is playing God. Flip the script mam. Today we're spewing 51 billion tons and rising of greenhouse gases pollution into our globally shared atmosphere annually. The very definition of playing God! We're 100% certain that these gases before fossil fuels were 280 parts per million of our atmosphere. Today combined greenhouse gases are 521. We're 100% certain and have been for 200 years of the ability of these gases to trap infrared heat. We measure the effect from satellites ground stations thousands of ocean monitors. We are certain the extra gases are trapping heat equivalent energy released by detonating 7 Hiroshima type nukes every single second for over thirty years. Again we've been "playing God" since steam engine was invented. Assuming you truly want to know the facts there's countless very good TH-cam pieces on the climate. Just look
According to the Global Carbon Project we do not even increase CO2 in the atmosphere, it all goes into the sinks, oceans and plants. This is just one angle among several other uncertainties. Very few people know what the actual unsolved questions are, i wonder if geo girl actually thinks about these things thoroughly.
@@nyoodmono4681 You keep posting the same nonsense. “We do not increase CO2 in the atmosphere” - what on earth are you on about? How do you explain it is now 420ppm? This isn’t exactly an obscure piece of information. Arguably, we have been playing god for a while now by releasing all this carbon from the geosphere to the atmosphere. I agree though that having messed with the carbon cycle in such a fundamental way; we should make us wary of possible uninteded consequences of our actions. I think this is especially true when it comes to solar management solutions (increasing albedo by discharging sulfur particles in the atmosphere).
@nyoodmono4681 You just explained the problem that I discuss in my induced global warming (th-cam.com/video/WM-C728HoRA/w-d-xo.html) at about 20 mins in; I go over how the hydrosphere (ocean) and biosphere (plants) take up the atmospheric CO2 we are releasing, just as you said, however, this is not good because it does not bring back balance to the carbon cycle since we did not originally get the carbon from the hydrosphere or biosphere. We got the carbon from the geosphere (rocks/fossil fuels), so to bring back balance, we need to put it back in the geosphere. Since it is going into the hydrosphere & biosphere, it is causing all sorts of harm like ocean acidification, eutrophication/harmful algal blooms, ocean anoxia/lack of oxygen, etc. so we really need to sequester it from both the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and even try to move it from going into harmful biospheric sinks like certain types of algae, into more healthy biospheric sinks like trees, soil microbes, and seaweed as discussed in this video :) Hope that makes sense!
@@GEOGIRL A problem? It would be the solution if all our extra CO2 was taken up by the sinks, regarding aprehended temperature changes due to accumulation in the atmosphere (ppm). The google message: "The term "climate change" refers to long-term changes in temperature and weather that are mainly caused by human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels" would be wrong. So this would be a mind blowing political problem. All the aprehensions you are sure of regarding "acidification" seem hasty to me, it is very hard to even slightly change the oceanic PH numbers globaly and the flora seems to adept quickly in many regards. In fact one could argue that the increased plant growth is beneficial. There are shells that live in sweet water, which is "acidic" compared to salt water. Finally even if we tried to sequester CO2, it is an impossible task, hybris again imo. Impossible to get near the magnitude that the global flora adepts and the gigatons that are processed here. Since you talk a lot of the primtive times too, a comparison of what has happened in past ice ages would make sense. In the Ordovician and during the Karoo ice ages, there was way more CO2 absorbed in the cold oceans. 2000-3000ppm. So it only makes sense that this will happen now when we artificaly increase the CO2. I can agree that we have to stay cautious since the emissions are an "experiment" we do.
Isn't it counter productive (and a bit arrogant) to attempt a "solution" for something that is ALWAYS changing? Just remember what happens when photosynthesis stops... youre book smart, but you lack all common sense. You related to John Kerry or Al Gore ?
climate changes naturally. We pump a lot of green house gas into the atmoshpere. We speed up the process. If we pumped less of it into the atmoshpere, climate change would be slower.
Short sentences only so that you have a chance to understand them.
And no, before you ask, I am not related to those politicians. But the question alone illustrates your ignorance pretty well.
Spring is making GEO Girl look soo Radiant 🤭🤤 Sequestrering my Carbon and Fertilizing My Field of Knowlege with Nitrous Oxide 🌞⛰️💘
As scientist you might want to explain how CO₂ or CH₄ can even present a problem. The masking factor alone is pretty large.
You can agree with most of the below.
CO₂ (carbon dioxide) @ 442ppm, specific gravity 1.5, has obesity issues, Gravity sucks, making it a ground hugger by design.
CH₄ (methane) @ 1.7 ppm, specific gravity .554, volatile, breaks down in contact with O₂ and O₃ (@ 21% of our atmosphere).
H₂O (as water vapour) @ ±21,000ppm, is by a factor of 95-98% the most dominant GHG.
climate changes naturally. We pump a lot of green house gas into the atmoshpere. We speed up the process. If we pumped less of it into the atmoshpere, climate change would be slower.
Short sentences only so that you have a chance to understand them.
That's how CO₂ or CH₄ can present a problem.