How to solve the climate crisis.
TLDR - In addition to carbon removal, solutions to global warming include creating alternative forms of energy, improving energy storage, and creating alternative forms of agriculture production.
What is global warming?
Global warming is a gradual increase in the temperature of the earth's atmosphere attributed to the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect comes from the example of greenhouses. The sun shines through the greenhouse’s glass, warming it up. The heat then gets trapped in the greenhouse and is able to keep the plants warm enough to survive during cold nights. For the earth, the material that keeps the planet warm occurs from gases like carbon dioxide (CO2). These are called greenhouse gases. CO2 is the main cause of global warming but other greenhouse gases include methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases. As greenhouse gases increase it becomes more difficult for the heat to escape causing the planet to gradually get hotter.
Humans have increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by about 50% since the beginning of the industrial age. CO2 is a pain because it hangs around for ~300-1000 years in the atmosphere. Scientists know the increases in CO2 are caused primarily by human activities because carbon produced by things like burning fossil fuels has a different ratio of heavy-to-light carbon atoms, so it leaves a distinct “fingerprint” that instruments can measure.
Why is climate change bad?
Floods. Glaciers are going to melt. When water freezes it expands so the glaciers that are already in the water aren’t the ones that need to be accounted for. It’s the glaciers that are on land.
Extreme weather conditions. Intensified and a greater number of droughts, heatwaves, hurricanes, snowfall, and other weather phenomena.
Growing crops becomes more difficult. The weather is less predictable increasing the variability of what any given crop would need to optimally succeed.
General health concerns. Increased levels of smog.
And more.
Action vs Passion
In 2019 Greta Thunberg gave a speech at the UN Climate Action Summit basically trying to create a wake-up call to the United Nations to solve climate change. Although her speech had a lot of passion it, unfortunately, isn’t going to solve the problem. In order to solve the problem, we need solutions. We need to do the research and understand the problem.
Causes
What are the main causes of increased greenhouse gases? 1 and 3 have a lot of overlap.
Electricity and heat production. 25% of greenhouse emissions. This includes burning fossil fuels and coal.
Agricultural and forestry. This includes cultivating live crops, stocks and deforestation. 24%
Industry. 21%
Transportation. 14%
What countries produce the most greenhouse gases? Every other country is negligible.
China 30%
US 15%
EU 9%
India 7%
Solutions - this is mainly an economic problem.
Carbon removal
The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates the need at approximately 10 gigatonnes of net CO2 removal per year by the year 2050 in order to keep the global temperature rise under 1.5 or 2C.
This can include nature-based, direct air capture, oceans, mineralization, or anything else that achieves net negative emissions.
Alternative form of energy generation.
Solar and nuclear fusion — every other alternative is negligible.
15 - 20 years out — nuclear fusion becomes more relevant
Solar energy - not efficient - if you make it more efficient you win. It would currently take a solar farm the size of New Mexico to power the world.
Origami, nanotechnology, biomimicry, chemistry, physics.
Energy storage.
Batteries
cheap cars, power more buildings
Agriculture production.
Lab-grown food
Cellular agriculture
Vertical farming
Call to action
Advocacy groups and protests are not where you're going to make the change.
The government’s hands are tied. They aren't really doing anything. They are just trying to make you feel better with tax credits.
The solutions are going to come from doing the research and create a solution.
Sources
https://www.xprize.org/prizes/elonmusk
https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/19/what-is-the-greenhouse-effect/