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| 00:29 | Chris hi there Chris I said hey today Seth I'm pretty good I did some heavier logging yesterday getting trees down so I'm a little bit uh sore on that but otherwise hail and Hardy great good to hear it looks like something bashed you in the cheek uh that's that's something else okay it it's going away I saw in the economist today Chris that uh Chinese fishing fleets are more than three was it bigger than the next three um largest fishing fleets put together yeah I know it's becoming a bit of a |
| 01:21 | scandal actually um that not only the fact the size of them but their behavior as well in some places like this swarmed all around the um sort of periphery of the Galapagos a little while ago and Ecuador got very upset about them yeah and that they're they're on mass I mean there is they have vast number as you say it's uh it's a really a big issue becoming quite a big issue I think it'll probably actually be coming up at the uh the uh CBD conference to see the cop 15 that's just started now in Montreal |
| 01:54 | they've also been intimidating uh the Philippines and that I saw yeah that's right 50 or 60 all vessels all the same size around two little Filipino fishing vessels yeah yeah yeah uh good morning John hey Flo hey hi everyone Hi and uh Doug haven't seen you for a while I have to change my background here how are you doing very well thanks yeah good to see you tons right yeah hi friends yeah uh right so uh let's make something ready okay what would we like to talk about today started talking about Chinese fishing |
| 02:53 | fleets already well yeah a little bit periphery to our interest but it very but um still certainly uh significant yeah foreign draft position statement I must admit I haven't had a chance to read it properly yet but um I know that some folks might have a number of uh row groups almost out to uh to to deploy a climate intervention without uh what one normally would think would be the proper experimentation or approvals mm-hmm oh yeah you meant it's the like the mate Sunset slot yeah yeah they've certainly come out of left field |
| 03:45 | from nowhere I think we could expect more of those over time um could be uh or at least people still trying uh so I'm just writing down what people are saying here uh just its ideas uh I don't know if you some of you guys had a discussion about um uh Steve Keane's talk at one of your meeting last week the um Prague meeting perhaps but maybe there's something worth mentioning it there perhaps if you unless you've exhausted your comments on that already to be honest I was quite Keen Keen to go to yeah that myself |
| 04:32 | um but didn't in the end um so I'm quite interested to know what people thought about that meeting yeah I mean yes I wanted to say certain things about um managing the commons which is a branch of Economics um but I think he talked about other things yeah um so uh so you attended that did you Chris I did watch uh Steve Keane's um webinar yeah his webinar right so can I put your name next to that if you want yeah hopefully other folks saw it as well we can have some sort of discussion yeah yeah yeah uh |
| 05:17 | okay Clive did you have you done the uh talk with meta Spencer um actually I kept that free and um but I don't know I was very busy but and there was no sort of Chase up or invitation so it kind of went went by the wayside okay so I don't know what's happened to that sorry so no news on that at all I've I've got something I want to get your input on yeah um last week I had a problem with my videos so I put up something in my background and actually thought wow this is pretty cool what it is it's uh the |
| 05:57 | elephant in the room and it's a visual and I want to get your feedback as to whether it might be um effective or wrong or brilliant or what so I'll put it I'll put it as my background screen when we get to that point okay uh I call it elephant in room elephant e-l-i is it visual yeah okay maybe one more thing or two what are we doing today we usually have Brian uh ah hi Brian and greetings greetings Brian and uh right and and David foreign and uh and hi Grant hello there so I know it's it's morning afternoon |
| 06:58 | and evening for us anything else anyone would like to discuss today the Earth sharp prizes were announced I believe on December 4th oh yeah shop prizes okay just so perhaps a brief one as well um It's featured on the main 9pm BBC News there was a little piece from I think it was the Seychelles saying how um the mangroves were gonna save the climate basically um and there was a an article which was also in on the BBC website which I can stick in the chat if I can find it um it was um let's say a being polite |
| 07:42 | well oversold yeah I think these things all help but yeah yes but in actual fact with things like manga well we'll talk about it later yeah okay okay that's very good very good yeah um okay well maybe so what about ordering then um that we're happy to go with this order I think mangroves is very much like to hear about that don't want that to be left to the end well I can say to begin with if you like we'll get rid of it quickly because it shouldn't take any time okay all right I'll find the uh the |
| 08:21 | link to the thing um basically I first saw it on the nine o'clock news and there was about a sort of five minute long piece with from the Seychelles with some local guys saying how you know the the mangroves and so on were gonna store loads of carbon and basically help us in a significant way solve the climate problem um and there was also a piece on the um BBC News website um the problem is that the um these type of projects have certainly been oversold in terms of how effective they are um there's been a there was a paper |
| 08:57 | published a little while ago that showed that when you look to the side of literature um the data was all over the place in terms of how good they were huge range of of sort of storage potential data quality was again all over the place and really wasn't reliable so it's very difficult to actually um say that some of these systems will be good but in actual fact these systems like Mangrove salt marshes and seagrass beds have a lot of other benefits as well which are probably actually more important habitat benefits uh print |
| 09:32 | things like Coastal erosion they have economic benefits to the local community when they use First Solar areas for young fish to grow on and so on so in actual fact they have lots of benefits that are probably more important actually than the climate ones and the climate ones are relatively minor and I think the there was a U. |
| 09:48 | S national Academy report a couple years ago that estimated that globally we couldn't expect more than I think it was about 0.8 gigatons of carbon via was the maximum you could actually get out of these systems probably so not trivial but not very significant either and that was I don't know exactly what the assumptions that figure was based on of course and that could be subject to revision so that's all anyway I'll find that link and uh stick it in the chat okay thank you Chris yeah any comments yes yeah yes |
| 10:26 | yeah go ahead then friends like other plants mangroves also uh do a good weathering and produce a best persist in the ocean so we say weathering there whether the soil the the sort of uh yes so they act together with microbes and whether so if you'll if you burn uh mangroves you will see there's a lot of Ash in them that's all whether it's material a little calcium and potassium and so forth yes yeah that they've that they've released from the the microbes whether the soil whether the uh the rock particles right |
| 11:23 | and that's is that silicates that I saw a lovely video actually it'd be worth mentioning um talking about silicate weathering and how important that is for uh absorbing carbon that's the same with uh with uh trees in in the uh of the continents same with three the less trees you have the less weathering yeah so they accelerate the weather they have all these microbes yeah but though Rock weathering is the major uh way that um the carbon Cycles sort of uh effectuated on land because all that they get what |
| 12:06 | the stuff gets washed into the sea afterwards you get silicating carbonate rocks get weathered and the bicarbonate ends up in the ocean yeah um yeah part of that it's a long-term cycle though yeah yeah I think friends is saying um mangroves do the same thing in right right there in the sea uh well there's a lot of actual not just mangroves but organic material that degrades does that in general not just from mangroves all sorts of organic material that there's there was an article I remember seeing some years ago |
| 12:39 | an extra part of that an extra yeah and and interestingly friends I I just saw a webinar last week where someone was adding Olivine to Salt marshes in the U.S um as another way of um accelerating uh weathering of that material but also benefiting the salt marshes and um interestingly they claimed in that that most of the actual carbon benefit was not in the sequestration but in the export to bicarbonate into the coastal Waters yes which is not yes perhaps the conventional view of how salt marshes and the other blue carbon systems |
| 13:25 | operate and sometimes it is the uh super uh basic material Serpentine which derives from Olivine olivine's one of the Min Olivine is a mineral Serpentine is various minerals in so there's a difference yeah certain time is a minimum is it well it's okay yeah it's the uh the weathered version then Olivine transforms to uh okay yeah which is why Serpentine has those crevices in it because it's less dense yeah uh so it forms all these crevices as it expands hello manager nice to see you again right and Brian I was on mute sorry okay |
| 14:28 | thank you yeah yeah welcome uh Brian yes morning manager I'm working on that paragraph and um we'll get it to you today um yes to respond on the mangroves um I think mangroves are very important Coastal features that are going to be beneficial they do require the coastal environment um it's a limited scalability challenge it's a problem of the perimeter of the ocean versus the entire area of the ocean in contrast to let's say California Sea forests the well historically uh most kelp not with the possible exception of the sargassum |
| 15:12 | sea most let's say most seaweeds would be limited to littoral Regions Coastline regions however with our marine permaculture substrate the only thing the seaweed requires is a substrate to hold it in proper position proper location geographically and a source of deep water nutrients which we can provide through Deep Water Irrigation so uh we're more optimistic about seaweed Forest when it comes to scalability then then mangroves and the other let's say blue carbon traditional ecosystems that are associated with a shoreline |
| 15:54 | so it's a scalability challenge you know embracing what Chris said and kind of extending it uh as true Solutions I think we need to look at things that can scale across the mostly empty ocean makes sense if mangroves uh sequester was it 0.8 of a gigaton of I don't know if that's carbon or uh presumably yeah I think it's carbon there is actually a statistic just published within the last 12 months from Carlos Duarte and others that uh estimated that existing seaweed for us fix an approximate 1.3 petograms of |
| 16:33 | carbon I'm not sure if that's a net export or not but they did document I believe those fixation rates what's a pentagram again the same as a gig a ton of carbon and that's carbon as opposed to carbon dioxide yeah yeah but remember that that is happening anyway this is not an addition this is no this is not addition that is not additional however yeah the the NES figure was what was potentially achieved through restoration I would be addition to the current system so that's there's a difference |
| 17:05 | between those figures in fact we can document 3 000 square kilometers of calpora's loss in the last decade in in two countries alone the United States and Australia so there is a substantial room for let's say regeneration yeah but of course the the NES figure though I don't think covered seaweeds was the NES figure was just I think salt Marsh's uh mangroves and seagrasses so it didn't include uh seaweeds and other materiality that's right and then um of course Marine permaculture would be additional when we |
| 17:38 | add additional platform offshore so that's uh something that we were looking forward to and uh working on assembling a tenth of a hectare um starting this week so very encouraging excellent starting this week yes we are in assembly uh it's a certain set of experiments so keep posted in the weeks ahead okay let's see how the deployment goes we'll see uh Chris can I just ask about when you said I didn't quite understand when you said um it's probably a quite simple thing that the main benefit of uh I think would be |
| 18:17 | saying uh mangroves is the export of bicarbonate into the ocean well the main carbon benefit not just the main benefit overall there was that particular study that I mentioned which is going on in the US it's still ongoing and this was early results uh I think they're doing it somewhere in the New England area I think but I'm not sure um they're adding Olivine onto the sediment surface in two different thicknesses and they're monitoring this in terms of where does all the carbon go and their initial results suggests that |
| 18:49 | more carbon is being exported as bicarbonate into Coastal Waters than is being sequestered within the sediment but that's just that one experiment it's not you can't generalize too much it's very early days yeah but I just want to understand what what that was about what that was yeah but it has been recognized for quite some time that a lot of these Coastal Blue carbon ecosystems not the seaweed the other traditional ones they do export quite a bit of carbon into as bicarbonate or even dissolved organic |
| 19:21 | carbon rather than necessarily they don't sequester at all in other words some of it goes out in into other areas that of course is beneficial in itself but it means that the blue carbon ecosystem itself doesn't sequester as much as perhaps some people thought okay because it just goes into the ocean that's a beneficial change that's a beneficial change to the coastal Waters oh yeah sure absolutely yeah yeah yeah yeah so here's an interesting question can we consider the transformation of Olivine |
| 19:51 | and carbon dioxide into bicarbonate in the epipelagic zone can we consider that to be a sequestration what happens to bicarbonate though I mean it dissolves in the in the water doesn't it yeah but it then stays there for anything up to ten thousand or a hundred thousand years David first doesn't it get taken up by uh I mean I don't know anything about this cycle so I apologize my questions uh naive but doesn't get taken up by the marine life sure but there is a vast amount of bicarbonate in the ocean |
| 20:33 | um it's it's it's the the pipe it's about 90 something percent of all the carbon in the ocean um in fact probably more than 90 I can't remember the precise figures but it's it's huge if you look at the um carbon um what do they call it the gerund diagram bicarbonate is the dominant carbon species dissolved in seawater by a mile uh carbonate so does that flip my question around and the consequence of this process is de minimis because it's a drop in the ocean as they say yeah but it but what it does |
| 21:07 | do it if it's going out locally it will increase the alkalinity and if you increase the alkalinity it'll also push up the pH so for example it's been proposed in some areas as a way to help coral reefs because if you can do it regionally or locally it can beneficial coral reefs by pushing up pH and alkalinity which helps them right and certainly a marine life is never going to deplete the bicarbonate put it that way not a chance yeah there's 40 times cover it down I I think it's steps turned I give I'm |
| 21:45 | okay yeah yeah I should be making the point that bicarbonate in surface waters can't really be regarded as long-term sequestration it's only when it gets into deep Waters that it is own it depends where it comes from though if you're changing something into bicarbonate it may be captured well that's what the ocean alkalinization process is trying to do is to increase the bicarbonate effectively but they also want but by doing that though to pull down more CO2 hmm yeah right so it's it's chemically |
| 22:19 | stable in mixed Waters and so that's very interesting because technically there are a number of uh and we managed to get some revisions on the X prize um because uh they were saying pulling carbon out of the ocean and we got them to say pulling carbon out of the surface ocean but now here's something where bicarbonate is stable in the epipelagic zone in the top 100 meters and it's not going to be going back into the atmosphere as well as that uh right the bicarbonate stable so that represents even a greater departure |
| 22:53 | let's say from previous thinking uh in terms of where that goes so it's possible that one could argue for sequestration as bicarbonate even in mixed layer in the top hundred meters so much depends on what bicarbonate because hydrogen is I mean it's very the chemistry is so confusing with its naming but hydrogen carbonate is the same thing as sodium bicarb words it's not the same thing but the carbonate is yeah hydrogen referring to calcium bicarbonate okay bicarbonate it's hco3 minus it's an ion |
| 23:31 | exactly that is that is what bicarbonate is it may associate with other anions of course depending on uh if they you know you precipitate them or things like that but in the ocean it's an iron on it basically on its own but they all associate with other things in the in the water obviously yes so what I'm saying is that you can't just put dump a huge a pile of you know negatively charged ions in the in the ocean there's always going to be the cation there as well and I'm saying it it matters yeah |
| 24:03 | that's what happens with weathering from non-land when you weather on on land that is what you're putting in the ocean you're putting in irons and cations bicarbonates and sodium or calcium or whatever so it's just it's no different really to the Natural system in that sense yeah whereas when CO2 goes into the when it gets absorbed into the ocean it becomes hydrogen carbonate as I understand well of course very briefly yeah important dissociates yeah well this is what what ocean acidification is |
| 24:33 | all about that it makes carbonic acid which is what hydrogen carbonate is so so anything that adds alkalinity to the to the ocean that's why it's that it's it's it's also took me a long time to learn I have to say and I think there's still more to learn uh but the the pH is is vitally important because that's a a reflection should we say of of the alkalinity anyway um but I hope that's useful to people you've gone on longer than I expected I've just I've just put in the chat a |
| 25:04 | link to the BBC article and two other articles about blue carbon and it's the traditional blue carbon one's not the seaweed great thank you very much Chris I mean I have to say I've I found I find it all this very interesting uh the chemistry and it's vitally important really um anyway um okay uh next then um what should we have next then uh I can do a very quick quick thing on interventions okay okay so please yeah I just just people have already seen it that there's seems to be a bandwagon |
| 25:41 | effect happening with a lot of uh dubious methods and sometimes dubious characters setting informal carbon credits for lots of methods but including uh ocean fertilization which to me is uh concerning because it's uh because these haven't been approved and uh seem to be unregulated and everyone's setting these credits for money we like you to have some tarring effect on on proper approved methods um yeah other particular examples that you're thinking of Sir yeah but I can't recall them for mine at the moment okay |
| 26:22 | best thing about Sunset wasn't it yeah that was an atmospheric one though so I just wondered whether Sev was thinking of ones within the marine environment though yeah the make sunsets one is sounds distinctly dubious yeah it does everyone is everyone aware that Sean Fitzgerald is giving a an update on the work at Cambridge this uh Thursday I think no it's in my calendar yeah yeah I I was not able to reach him yesterday but um probably worth trying to confirm when is this it's on on Zoom I guess if you go to the |
| 27:07 | CCR website you should see a an ad for it or hopefully yeah oh thank you for that right now sorry what's that David you're gonna have a look yeah uh yeah yeah thanks for that Sev I didn't know about that so I don't know if I missed the email or wasn't invited I think it was somewhere on the Google uh the CDR groups or the main group The Engineering Group one of The Observers yeah yeah uh Sean right uh that'd be good to get an uptake so you can give it to everybody all at the same time instead of coming on our |
| 27:45 | meeting we we like him coming on our meetings of course hi Peter hi nice to see you yeah it's okay um and you're back from Sardinia where you walked through a burnt up forest for a week with yourself right yes we're working on uh uh part of the forest that got um last year and uh we we we're analyzing the the the the the soot we could we we could ask you to if you'd like to say a piece about it um Peter we could add you to the list to the agenda and uh would would you like to do that uh yes yes I just want to manage it |
| 28:30 | properly rather than just be chaotic um so but I just want to say hello as well uh Peter Williams uh Peter W okay um um yeah burnt forest and Sardinia yeah um right okay um so any I think we've done that one there haven't we so um the this draft agu position status which looks like a step in the right direction about that Chris and see yeah I mean I haven't read it thoroughly myself but I did I've had a very quick look and I've also noticed comments from Ron Bayman and someone else uh on the uh noac |
| 29:21 | emails and um particularly that they think it needs to be put that cooling needs to be made more urgent than it is in the document currently also that the they seem to very much leave methane removal or related things as a very much an afterthought and also that they probably should be more emphasis on the ocean I think was another comment that was made as well and obviously we probably agree with the letter one because obviously that's an area we're particularly interested in um so I think and if you go to the link |
| 29:57 | and if I can find the link at the foot of the page where the um they've put in the new statement and also the current statement they already have and at the foot of the page there's like a little a place you can put your comments in if you wish to add comments about the new one so that's something that people might find of interest if they want to and having a lot of folks putting in similar comments saying you know we need more of this or whatever it is then that might be quite helpful to push them and |
| 30:24 | I think comments are can be submitted until sometime in early January if I'm right it's on the page anyway I'll get it in a minute and stick it in the zoom right thank you that's very helpful actually to be able to make comments and sort of vote on it um [Music] sometimes I think sorry for except for I don't mean to a point that you're particularly because sometimes because you've been a government scientist um focusing on the ocean um and um we many of us come out with things we'd |
| 30:58 | like to do this or that and yeah it's very helpful actually because you tell us well you you've got to have license for this or or you know you can't do that or that's going to be seen as dumping or something um so it's it's a heart and let me just say it's heartening that you say yes the ocean needs attention what but if I can just diverge from the agenda just a minute what do you think what should be done with the ocean other than uh risk you know better efficient control over fishing |
| 31:29 | or was it too long a list probably it is a long list um but basically we need a hell of a lot more research in the whole graph to different areas presently uh yeah well research and obviously development where you the research suggests that something could be done um uh you know usefully from that research um because you need to trial things and get up to Pilot scales and so on before you can actually be certain that something would be a really viable uh technique for example for carbon removal right I mean and because and you also I |
| 32:03 | don't you've participated in the sample I think we've edited it or you've been on that sort of board of the the gasam geoengineering uh sort of review body kind of thing whatever it is yeah as a co-chair of that group co-chair right um do you have I mean you've just said that you thought that Olivine in um seed grass Meadows sounded quite good and you know mangroves good but just not not enough are there any other sort of favorites of yours uh uh I think I've said it before actually on |
| 32:38 | this group actually because I said I thought very much exploring the seaweed sinking which is obviously Brian's particular interest was a very well worthwhile one because uh compared to Ocean fertilization for me it's a much more efficient process you're much more likely you can actually put most of what you want down on the seabed if you do ocean fertilization you're going to get at best a few percent of what you've generated the surface down onto the Deep seabed so it's inherently inefficient by |
| 33:05 | comparison with seaweed sinking that doesn't mean to say it wouldn't be necessarily useful in some some circumstances by any means but there are contrasts so for me that one would be one uh ocean alkalinization I think has potential but probably only on a local to Regional scale just because of the logistics because you um most of the traditional ones involve putting a lot of minerals into the sea and if you were to have a try and have a global program you'd need probably the entire world shipping Fleet to move enough stuff to |
| 33:35 | have the appropriate effect whereas if you focus on things like the Great Barrier Reef for example or other small scale recent things you could probably have a an effect at those scales and be more practical perhaps and the other beneficial the ocean alkalinization as we said before once you've put the stuff into bicarbonate form you've effectively got an extremely long-term virtually permanent permanent real permanence which for me is is essentially getting approaching geological so turnover time in the ocean to me is not permanent if |
| 34:07 | you're talking of ten thousand hundred thousand years or more then that to me is pretty well pretty damn permanent or permanent enough anyway for it that way yeah the one thing I I'm not so familiar with is the electrochemical version of alkalinization um which there are a number of people exploring and I think those could have benefits um some of them have quite a lot of side benefits you can produce things like hydrogen from some of the processes and you can produce other materials and do other things with some of the stuff you |
| 34:38 | take off and you end up putting the alkaline material back in the ocean which it has the same effect as the alkaline minerals as we've talked earlier or something similar anyway and so for me those are the ones I think have got personally the most potential but I could easily be surprised by some of the other ones because as we said in our report in 2019 a lot of these techniques we still need to know it's grossly um the level of knowledge is simply not enough to know whether they'll actually be really effective hence the need for |
| 35:08 | research yeah yeah because until we know enough you don't know you can speculate all you like until someone's actually gone out and trial things for real you know and computer models are fine but they only take you so far yeah based on you by the way Clive I know you're a computer person no no no no no no no I didn't didn't cross my mind yes okay thank you very much for that that's great um right um and and I'm happy I'm sorry uh but uh let's go go ahead John on it because I think sorry just as |
| 35:49 | a side to a Christmas Day I mean we're talking about emphasis on the oceans i i attended the launch of the biodiversity council at the University of Melbourne here in Australia last week and fully I mean a lot of good uh involvement indigenous involvement and respect for First Peoples and it was terrific but uh it was all terrestrial there was nothing about biodiversity in the oceans it was and you know it's sort of like the missing link all the time um we really have to keep talking about the oceans until I'm seeing |
| 36:19 | yeah just look in line with what uh Chris was saying um we have already hosted our first set of biogeochemists of these from Taiwan uh who visited us last month and took water samples in preparation for an observational program that will be going along with our Hector scale Marine permaculture so we're very much uh supportive of what Chris is saying and in fact uh planning collaborations and field work with about geochemists and physical astronographers from uh from Europe from the Americas and from australasia to participate in our Hector |
| 36:56 | scale projects and provide some third-party observations of carbon sequestration so we view this as really essential to our work going forward yep great to have that um scientific backup for measurement there yeah yeah um okay um so um yeah uh yeah we sort of veered off onto something else anything else to say about the draft agu position status from anybody I'd just suggest everyone reads it and if they feel so inclined to put in comments yeah great okay I do want to add just as a footnote that um the United Nations has chosen a hundred |
| 37:38 | year threshold for a reason it's true that you know 100 Years of sequestration is not it's not infinite but it um you know 100 years from now our civilization is likely to be processing carbon so differently than it is today that it's actually really difficult to predict you know how we'll be uh kicking the can down down the road 100 years seems highly valuable give them our present state of warming and disruption uh and so I I do um actually believe in the wisdom of the 100 Year threshold that United Nations |
| 38:11 | established under CDM as being a helpful degree of kicking the can down the road in terms of carbon balance I think it's fine as a minimum but I think in the ocean we can generally do a lot better I agree well yes I mean that that's interesting threshold because you can see evidence for multi Thousand-Year sequestration time scales in some places um but uh you know I think it'll take some time to get to that level of proof whereas our Threshold at the getting to 100 Year threshold of proof I think may |
| 38:43 | be more feasible in the years ahead so I encourage us to start there and then expand it's going to be very interesting to see how anybody can say this this will stay there for a hundred years um okay well there's radiocarbon ages and the Abyssal ocean and there's uh other physical oceanographic um I think the ocean conveyor is well established uh and physical barriers to upwelling from an energetic standpoint those help constrain it but I think you need to talk about median time style cropping giving the widespread mixing |
| 39:15 | that does occur yeah median times average sort of times yeah so apply but on that exact point um I stuck an email in to the noet group um about a talk that's coming up in January from Miles Island who's talking about the physical oceanography and its turn over time relative to warming I think that exactly addresses some of those issues yes thank you I saw that yes yeah I'll look for that Chris thanks yeah great um um It's Gonna Be You Again Steve uh Chris but um should we let's let's uh |
| 39:50 | spread it around a bit and have asked Doug to um uh get Doug to ask us about his um uh elephant in the room uh picture are you there Doug yes there you are myself can you hear me okay yep yep so I'm always looking for ways to communicate to my senators and representatives we have a new representative who replaced the one senator who moved into a retirees slot and I happen to see her at the coffee shop the other day and we chatted for about five minutes she's very interested to know more about what we're doing |
| 40:26 | so my brain is constantly working and I came up with this idea of the elephant in the room let me find the um what do I do I have to go here I last week I had a problem with my video so I through this uh choose video background you know that's it here we go you know settings there we go um now where is it I think it's um here okay here we go now let me uh-huh Donna can you see it okay uh let's see let's move move this that's better yeah yeah and you see the elephant in the room if you keep speaking Doug then uh it'll |
| 41:10 | come up can you hear me okay yeah okay so can you see the elephant in the back of the behind me okay um so uh this is kind of like Robert tulip's thousand little squares on a grid with a little tiny grid um so um oh yeah where am I here oh so anyway in the lower right hand corner you'll see a little arrow that points at a basket of apples that basket of apples is about equivalent to the annual um CO2 emissions and the Elephant of course is uh is um all the carbon in the air or actually a CO2 in the air in the atmosphere |
| 41:54 | to give a relative size a proportion and to make the point that it's the elephant that's causing the warming not not the apples is generally is that true the atmosphere carbon atmospheric carbon is what's causing the warming I mean that's that's basic right yeah so what's already there okay so if we take the apples away we still have the elephant yeah so there's some controversy as to whether the elephant's going to shrink on its own or do we have to put it on a diet by the conversation we had earlier you |
| 42:31 | know the Chemistry Between the ballast between the atmosphere and the and the ocean so the question is is it is it correct to say that the elephant's still there unless we put them on a diet the atmosphere is going to continue carbon in the atmosphere is going to continue to warm the planet is that right because I've heard Michael Mann doesn't think so Alvord doesn't think so uh well it it won't stay static I think that's certainly the case as I understand it um some of the because the ocean takes |
| 43:05 | up some stuff from um the atmosphere anyway and somebody gets taken up obviously in the terrestrial soil and biosphere as well um so I think over time the assumption is it would tend to go down slowly slowly yeah slowly yeah as opposed to some people who think that'll it'll whiz back to you know pre-industrial in a matter of sort of 50 years flat or even less which I think is highly improbable um uh so yeah I think it'll only it'll react slowly and of course the other thing you haven't got to bear in mind is |
| 43:40 | even if we don't have no more CO2 to the atmosphere which means the heat that we get from the atmosphere is going to presumably if it's stayed static would stay static as well but on the other hand the ocean is turning over and there's a lot of heat already gone into the ocean which when it comes back to the surface it'll give up again and warm the atmosphere and that's over quite a long time scale as Brian and I were just talking about earlier um so it's not just about CO2 the CO2 is |
| 44:08 | an obviously important part of it but it's the the knock-on effects through things like warming and so on we have to take into account as well well Michael Mann when he was on a webinar back uh July or June a year ago said there's things that are happening up and things that are happening down and they cross over and the bottom line is that uh the atmosphere uh atmospheric carbon will decline uh rapidly and Al Gore made a comment just about a month ago just before the just before the cop actually at the cop that he said that if |
| 44:42 | we reach true Net Zero when we reach true Net Zero whatever that means that the uh that the I I remember who said CO2 or the temperature the CO2 will stabilize within three or four years and if we continue at net true zero or true Net Zero that half of the human caused CO2 will fall out within 25 to 30 years is what he said so my understanding is going to be a lot more than 25 to 30 years to get us back down to 350 parts per million and so I have actually initiated a conversation with with um Mike McCracken and he's because he |
| 45:28 | was actually Al Gore's science advisor back in 2007 uh so I figured he and he does have a contact so he's actually reaching out to find out who told Gore those numbers and get to the bottom of it but so bottom line is the elephant unless we put it on a diet and shrink it it's going to continue to warm or hold hold the temperature constant at least I think it it also depends what you're what you're talking about the temperature of because the the air temperature I understand it if the if the uh atmospheric greenhouse gases stay |
| 46:08 | the same so if you can suddenly keep them stop them from changing then the air stops heating up but the oceans are going to carry on are heating up so and they're the main cause of these extreme weather events many of them well those with the ocean then give up the heat and continue heating the atmosphere is that what you're saying uh well uh yeah the the atmosphere Luke gives its heat away so other people might correct me on this but as I understand the atmosphere gives its heat away back out to space quite quickly uh so the the |
| 46:40 | ocean you know will have there's an interaction with the ocean in the air because it water evaporates from the ocean um and uh so it'll have an interaction here but but the generally the air is the temperatures and the land is is determined by the greenhouse gases and so is the ocean but the ocean it takes so long to warm up and whereas the air warms up very quickly and it cools down very quickly the ocean is still trying to catch up yeah there's a big butt yeah the ocean has taken up 90 of the Heat |
| 47:11 | from the CO2 increase 90 percent of the extra heat we've had since the industrial revolution has gone into the ocean yeah and if we stop uh or decline CO2 declines and so on and over time the ocean when it turns over will give a lot of that back to the atmosphere even if the atmosphere even if it doesn't increase the temperature of the atmosphere it does mean that the decline the long-term decline in the temperature will be quite slow I would have thought right so so this is all to make the point and for me to make the |
| 47:44 | point to my new uh congressional representative that why we need to have SRM because this elephant is not going away real fast indeed yeah yeah and what I did this morning I put a big old umbrella over the top of it I'll show you that next week I'm giving a presentation next Saturday to a friend uh his his ecosocialist group and I so I'm taking this I'm making this into a little more fancy with a nice umbrella to indicate SRM but uh Corbin is a sun shield it's got a special name isn't it when it keeps the |
| 48:25 | sun off yeah that's I can't remember the name as a name for a thing like that it's a parasol or parasol thank you that's it yeah Broadway as you call them Well we'd have probably mainly because our main problem here is rain not Sun yeah I know well parasol where wherever so anyway thank you very much I appreciate that input oh by the way I wanted it right oh if I leave the room I have a smiley face yeah and I saw that before yeah I was gonna say it's it'd be nice when you say SRM because we distinguish |
| 48:59 | between strategic aerosol injection we don't have um John Nissen here today at least not yet and that's his what his as his favorite mechanism and then others here I haven't seen Stephen for a few times um Marine Cloud brightening which many of us think is rather safer so it's interesting you you mentioned that because I I got blocked by Michael Mann because I asked him if uh what was it Bill Kevin wrote an article and he was dissing geoengineering yeah intention intending to dis stratospheric |
| 49:35 | aerosol injection ssai but usual engineering throughout he never even measured well Michael Mann a year and a half ago on this webinar that other people have seen mention three different names for the topic was solar geoengineering and he referred to it as solar radiation management uh he never mentioned geoengineering but he mentioned three different things all meaning the same thing but they're talking about Sai using all these other terms so I'm I I told him I said why are you um constantly referring to geoengineering |
| 50:18 | just seeing everything under the under the umbrella under the SRM umbrella and uh anyway he blocked me on Twitter I can no longer talk to Michael Mann on Twitter sorry to hear that maybe you can reach him another way Doug I I can reach him through Bill I've got to figure out how to do it though yeah bill so Bill Bill and Michael had this little love fest going on in the thread so I and building up blockly but Michael did so um Bill still my friend that's nice to hear okay um sorry yeah yeah up front sorry friends |
| 51:02 | yeah I have a question uh the s i uh audio s-a-i Stratosphere injection yeah uh in the in the stratosphere it makes a haze there if it takes the same amount and put it in the lower troposphere of this sulfuric gas acid aerosol then you make white clouds with it you can get much more Sun radiation reflection than in the in the the Stratosphere it doesn't last as long it's my opinion yeah because it makes life classes condensed condenses and makes much more up there yeah but they have to keep her |
| 52:08 | making them friends every every three weeks because they get rained out don't they but they don't need to bring it up to uh ten thousand meters yeah it's a much more uh economic yeah one thousand meter and if you if you notice it will not work good you can stop it at once and don't wait for three years until it has fallen down yeah yeah very much agreed yeah and also the UV problem you have soft yes which we've so this we've discussed that before haven't we did it blocks the UV I must say it every time because it's |
| 52:59 | true yeah so nobody veers no one gets the wrong idea yeah and it's uh there are some uh benefits uh that Franz has alluded to you know the you have a one or two week residence time of tropospheric aerosols like this uh until the next rain and um this actually has a benefit in in trying some incremental approaches with limited Geographic and limited time scale uh so if you need to refreeze the Arctic for example there could be a benefit in the summer time of having more cloud cover and this could be facilitated with tropospheric |
| 53:40 | aerosols so I think it's something we should include in our um you know quiver of approaches uh particularly early on tropospheric aerosols have limited time scale and limited duration relative to stratospheric aerosols and could provide a good initial foray if you will into um into overall reflection this could be a form even of marine Cloud brightening uh in that sense around the Arctic region in the summertime to facilitate reflectance in cooler temperatures totally agree um Ryan I'm partly Playing devil's |
| 54:17 | advocate but actually friends and I have been saying that to people it's nice to hear you saying the same thing very well it would also protect high-level ozone too which would be another advantage it wouldn't harm yeah tropospheric aerosols would not harm uh I was as much as stratosphericos as much as stratospheric aerosols that's correct um absolutely and if it's uh yeah anyway if it's our uh aerosol for depleting methane that also depletes the chloromethanes which drift up to the stratosphere and then destroy it other |
| 54:55 | you know the CFCs and so forth so um we keep plugging away uh okay ships remitting yourself replacement who was that's been removed from bunker fuel now sulfur fuels and so forth so yes that's better for us being lost yes I met vit ghani um did I tell you yeah about a week ago and said that some stuff about that to him um he's always sees a more complex picture and he says there's so many interactions between chemicals I I find it to be a poetic irony that the hockey stick and temperatures occurred around 1980 with the passage of |
| 55:37 | the Clean Air Act in the United States it may be coincidental but prophetic perhaps as well yeah it's also tricky uh yes thank you Brian anything else from anyone hi Tara nice to see you again nice to be on here I I do have a I have a question that uh you can ignore and I can go back and please ask a question ask a question uh the reduction in photosynthesis that would happen or like what are what are the other what are the other byproducts of reducing radiant light reaching uh reaching the ocean surface and reaching |
| 56:23 | the the land surface uh with stratospheric aerosol or yeah yeah and how do you how do you calculate that like if you come up with a reliable go ahead Brian please a good way to study this on Ocean and land is to look at limiting nutrients and on land oftentimes water can be a limiting nutrient in the sense of having adequate Irrigation in the sea it's very common to have nitrate or phosphate as limiting nutrient and it's very rarely sunlight that's limiting except perhaps in the polar regions in the winter time |
| 57:04 | and the subpolar region so really we're talking about nearly 24 hours of daylight in the summertime and uh you know plenty of light it's not limiting so it's really a matter of nutrient Supply in this case limiting nutrients are commonly nitrate or phosphate in the ocean yeah I seem to remember seeing I can't remember the figures exactly for the amount of reduction in likes to say terrestrial agriculture from Sai and I think it was a very tiny percentage I think it was like the order of one percent or less reduction of light |
| 57:37 | something really small so the chances of it being really significant don't seem high but I mean that depends obviously on precise data perhaps you need to gather in future if you're going down that route right and it's important to note that a one percent reduction in light in a non-limiting case may be a point zero one percent decrease effect on productivity uh in the case that light is not limiting yeah and it's also the fact that diffuse slot is often better for plants than direct sunlight yeah I |
| 58:10 | agreed yeah and so yeah certainly if you whiten this Stratosphere then you will get more diffused light that's right so you might wonder Tara why are we saying we don't like uh the stratospheric aerosol injection what France says is it limits the ultraviolet which is absorbed so that has another effect that most people don't even know about which is that it makes radicals in the in the air in the uh you know which clean the air you know this is why you know the smoke blowing off the coast travels a thousand miles over the ocean |
| 58:44 | by the time it gets the other side it's clean and it this depletes methane from the air as well so we call it the oxidative power of of the atmosphere that these these radicals oh radicals consider the disinfectant a lot of those arguments though Clive are based on the Assumption you're talking of sulfur FCI and there may be other or other potential aerosols that could be used that may have different effects of course you can't assume they'll all be the same as a sulfur so they wouldn't uh |
| 59:13 | wouldn't restrict the uh UV intensity I don't know but I'm just saying you mustn't assume that all aerosols will have the same effect because they won't because of the different chemical and physical characteristics they will have different effects which may be bad of course as well as good yeah yeah fair enough there we go friends we've got other aerosols to look at the UV intensity changes from thanks for your question Tara okay let's uh move on uh unless anyone else else has a related |
| 59:44 | comment or question uh let's hear about um oh how about you Peter um I'd love to hear about your trip to Sardinia okay well I can uh I can tell you quickly uh I also have a lecture on this which uh I can give uh uh but uh it's basically two uh two processes which actually interact but they although they look separate um one is that we've been working on the Greenland ice sheet in the summer and measuring uh how how rapidly it blackens it blackens up because the um as as the water melts uh which does quite rapidly |
| 1:00:32 | in the middle of summer um it leaves behind the black sort of the dirt or the soot depending on what you think it is um which which sits there and makes a whole lot of sheet darker so we we're we're dealing with the darkening of the ice sheet which of course that means it's Albedo changes and it and which makes it melt even faster then at the same time as that's going on uh we have in some places major brush fires and we've been looking at the the brush flies in Sardinia um and uh there was a very large outbreak last |
| 1:01:14 | summer or this this last summer and we're expecting there'll be another one coming up next year so we're going back to Sardinia next year and there the the uh you've got a huge amount of blackening going on of all the olive Groves and all the trees are covered in in well it turns out to be soot we're doing an analysis of it but it's it's hard it seems to be hydrocarbons long chain fatty acids um but the the link between those two phenomena is that the uh the brush fires um send large slaves of of soot and over |
| 1:02:01 | the over the nearby continent which in this case is Greenland and then that in settling on the ice sheet um causes the Ashi to get darker so we're trying to look at understanding to what extent the uh uh the blackening of the ice sheet is related to the occurrence or the increasing occurrence of um and um so that that's what I'm doing something field work into two different places and hoping I can link them together uh we're using the amount of spectroscopy to get at what the species are of the soot that's produced by the |
| 1:02:47 | brush fires and it it's uh it's it's quite complex structure but um a lot of it is is a sort of pure simple chain um hydrocarbons very interesting thank you of course there's been lots of those huge forest fires in the Boreal in forests in Siberia and all yeah up there that's the fear because um in this case Sardinia versus Greenland or not they're just places you happen to be able to get to but in terms of the massive release of um of of thoughts or whatever from from for brush fires that's that's definitely |
| 1:03:33 | Siberia by silence sauce and the Siberian uh uh soot blood does blow down to Greenland I mean that's they're not so far apart so the queen of Siberia link is is one which which we think is really important but the Sardinian link is because you've got access to do you live nearby yeah guys I just want to ask what do you think if if someone could um put powder like marble powder you know sort of carbonate powder sprinkle if it could be sprinkled over these dark patches do you think that would help at all or it's just too big |
| 1:04:17 | an operation now I think that would be too big an operation for me when you walk on the green light sheet you're walking on mud it's extraordinary um the the in the uh in the old days that is when I was when I was young and doing glaciology the the green that I see was white because it was I covered with snow and even in the summer it was white but now it's black and and it's black and brown and re and it's not even ice it's it's mud and because there's so much uh of the ice has melted away and what's |
| 1:04:58 | left is a kind of refined um refined muck it's it's it's got It's developed from from being uh ice or being being ice that's got some dirt in it to being dirt where the ice is already melted out and uh it's a different material now so is this dirt and sort of certain and dust that's that's um several years worth that was embedded in earlier years of ice and then as as each year as more and more ice melts the dirt's Left Behind yeah exactly yeah it's a concentration of all of the |
| 1:05:41 | um dirt and and stuff that was in The X meters of ice that that melted effectively above that current level yes so where X increases yearly you know there's there's more melts each year so the the concentration of dirt goes up and in fact it if we have if there's time to the next time I've got a bunch of slides of pictures that I took on the ice sheet so you can see what that process looks like yes please yeah yeah um yeah so that's uh kind of almost another self-reinforcing feedback I suppose it's the same one but it's an |
| 1:06:20 | Excel it's a naturally accelerating uh yeah yes it's another one of these sort of satanic positive feedbacks that wherever you look there are things you don't expect but when you find them they're bad so this is one of those yes one question uh how far from the coast is a melting in summer um well it's it now occurs right across the ice sheet in fact the last time across the whole house yeah they actually had rain I heard on the highest point of the green and ice sheet this summer it actually was raining that's |
| 1:07:01 | um it's very good yeah it's scary there's the the the the biggest um the maximum precipitation and maximum um dirty vacations that's word is is sort of around the edges but it does occur right across into the center of the ice sheet um that that's uh because that's about uh it's about two miles high it's very high altitude 8 000 meters and it still snows during the Miss presumably you still get a cover of snow in the winter oh yes in Winter yes um and uh so the the the the ice sheet |
| 1:07:42 | whitens up in the winter it gets in the snow cover and that has to be gotten rid of in the summer before these other processes can happen yeah yeah thank you for Peter uh and that is uh does the rain that you're getting increasingly on the Greenland ice sheet rents any of this muck away so you get a brighter summer Sheet later after rains um well not as far as I can see what it tends to to wash away is that is that is um the water I mean I need to say you've got a whole drainage system there of um water from the rain water from melt |
| 1:08:23 | water uh which which runs into water waterfalls of mulang and uh it's it's it's a cleanse it's cleansing itself of of everything except the dirt the dirt and that and soot which is staying behind yeah that's concerning I agree the um the glaciers obviously generates a lot of fine material that comes out to the Sea eventually because in fact there's a proposal I came across recently suggesting that Greenland could be the source of a much sand that we need for making concrete because there's |
| 1:08:58 | vast amounts coming out around the coast from underneath the gratia but that's from grinding the rocks of course primarily not from the stuff on the surface of the glaciers I assume um for uh for making cement certainly needs coarse sharp sand grains not not great very fine stuff yeah I know but that was just what people said I mean they were probably not well informed yeah I've seen very big sand bars uh I mean you now have how river systems that used to be just um address here and then something trickling from it so uh like the |
| 1:09:39 | kangaroo sack river is now it's got a great big Sandbar at the uh and that stuff um it's well the question is what it what is it is it what kind of sand is it is it something I've heard that the Greenland government is trying to to harvest that and use it yeah yeah it's certainly not true Seb that all you get out is fine sort of flour from glaciers if you look at glacial deposits you get everything up to sort of small Pebbles and things as well and there certainly are lots of sound bars as people decide |
| 1:10:14 | around the coast particularly as the glaciers recede they're exposing some of these deposits in the valleys and so on in the uh in the river systems but the glacier flower is the very fine stuff oh yeah yeah but that's not what makes the waters look milky when they fly out yeah perhaps that gets washed away um Sev but gets easily washed away in the sand just falls down and stays there layers I mean it's actually quite substantial these sandbars they yeah it can be several meters thick uh and uh yeah you can you can you can drive a car |
| 1:10:51 | on them you know there's been a couple of um articles in Science magazine about this um sand ice which I came across um over the last year or so I think I'll see if I can find a link to it yeah the Greenland government really thinks it's going to be a National Asset that's right yeah yes there's a various uh benefits to them if the ice melts they can drill for oil and so forth yeah there's a there's an article in science that's called Greenland build an economy on sand it might be easy to get out |
| 1:11:32 | very hard to extract from the no this is all this is all exposed they haven't got they've just got to dig it up it's not uh they've got roads or or sea passages like we didn't do it well it's a lot of it is in the actual Fjord so you could dredge it you don't need to get vehicles to it necessarily okay okay manager you had your hand up earlier yes I did I I I wanted to just give a very brief update to say that we've started a little group here in the Hudson Valley of people who are trying |
| 1:12:11 | to understand Global Climate science and potential Solutions and organize the information uh it includes a high school student from auntiara and I now have a Bennington college intern uh and and I want to uh introduce or give Tara Vamos a a chance to introduce herself um I've been forwarding articles and so forth and um since she uh and and also alerting the people in the group of these calls so they can learn firsthand and and uh not rely on my trip excuse me on my translation so um Chara if you just want to real quick |
| 1:13:07 | introduce yourself at the wind Twitter was here last time actually uh manager okay and gave a brief introduction so I'll I'll just I'll just uh say thank you Rihanna for for uh calling me out and and I've been meaning to get back to you and say that I've managed to get on that time um and yeah I'm and I have not been doing so well with following all of the links nor did I think that I would be able to but um I I appreciate being able to soak up some stuff by popping onto these calls when I'm able to yeah and I |
| 1:13:47 | think the the idea is uh we don't uh put it on you I don't put it on YouTube so it's searchable but um when people if people want to send the links you know so that friends or someone wants to look at the look at this then that's okay I think that's the understanding of all the scientists and everybody here Tara so feel free to send it to you know someone who's interested in learning yes I am I am actually curious like in a longer term question what the like what Avenues are being pursued for |
| 1:14:20 | interfacing with like John Kerry's office or um just with policy makers like where where anything is going this uh another that's a good question um there's another group called prag planetary restorative action group or something like that and they're the alternative Monday so this is fortnightly and then the intermediate you know intervening Mondays they speak about the same time I think um and they are a bit more well they so this is basically Discussion Group where we talk about anything we want and they |
| 1:14:58 | they have more of a plan and they've come up with a document so um I could forward some of those to you and so you could request uh is there someone here some of you here from that group for example Doug for example you're on the prag group how would you put your email in the chat I'll send it to Robert tulip and he will add you to the list yeah so there one um friends and I I'm pursuing an Avenue um and um we're all I think many of us are doing our own thing doing something um I know Grant's got a big project uh |
| 1:15:39 | he's managing um and to be the ocean and Sev uh some of savv's ideas have been taken up by the Cambridge climate repair center yep I wouldn't like to see this group get many scores of members that would become unwieldy then I think between between the 10 and 30 is probably the ideal number yeah it seems to self-manage itself uh so far at least yeah but if we were to offer widespread invitations or lots of students to join yeah um okay maybe I missed that then yeah so if you a couple of people it hasn't |
| 1:16:20 | become a problem so far no it hasn't yet but I don't want to see it no okay um I'd find I'd have to find a way to manage that um but um anyway the two that were that are here uh are very you know very welcome and um yeah very much uh intend for you to share anything you learn from from here and and bring questions next time you know use use this as best you can okay um so uh let's have I mean sorry Chris we we had I'll leave you to the end um Brian yeah Earth shot prize please is Brian still there |
| 1:17:03 | oh Brian you're there maybe he's taking a trip that's fine I just had to uh reconfigure my computer right I need a 30 second runway in order to get back okay um so there was an ocean winner of the earth shot prize it was uh indigenous women of the Great Barrier Reef there's a ranger program that works on the reef there it's good to have the engagement I am familiar with the Rangers program um I'm not sure about the quantifying the the scalability of how this is a solution other than it does connect us |
| 1:17:42 | with the indigenous cultures and Equity across genders and across groups of people so to start other ones in terms of finalists that are noteworthy I guess another winner was not pla which is working to use seaweed actually to produce less plastic not PLA and otpla is a company what does it stand for oh that doesn't matter not plastic okay right and so you have edible water balls and things like that okay basically seaweed Plastics um the other note or the one um another winner under fix our climate was 44.01 in Oman that's the molecular |
| 1:18:28 | weight of carbon dioxide and I believe they're using pretty tight weathering to do a thousand tons a year of sequestration there uh and there were finalists uh see Forester in Portugal um was one of the finalists and they're focusing on trying to replant um seaweed for us unfortunately I'm not seeing them as as addressing the root cause of uh stratification in the ocean so uh we helped to inspire sea Forester originally when they got started I had a meeting with Paul Bakken before he founded it and I think it was inspired |
| 1:19:06 | to some extent by the climate Foundation um but you know I'm glad to see this effort growing globally and hopefully we'll get a lot of these groups uh restoring natural upwelling over time to ensure the environmental conditions that will be necessary for seaweed Forest going forward uh another one group finalists called the Great bubble barrier actually looks at using bubbles to constrained Plastics like a bubble wall that actually is at rivers and and would uh intercepts plastic waste before it reaches the sea so that's an intriguing |
| 1:19:40 | solution as well and quickly scanning the remaining finalists um there may have been one or two other ocean based uh finalists I'll do a quick scan here Coral Vita I believe is a 2021 winner so it must have been last year and uh just another quick scan living sea walls in um Sydney I believe was a 2021 finalist as well these were all announced December 4th in Boston and there's another group called pristine Seas which I know less about but you can find them on the list of finalists they were 2021 finalists as well |
| 1:20:26 | and let's see uh Synergy I know you're working more in sanitation in Kenya uh takachar is working on eliminating rice straw burning in India something that we pioneered about five years ago and I think that's pretty much Yeah we actually won the um Urban Labs Innovations Delhi University of Chicago a prize for proposing eliminating rice straw burning in haryana uh it was a quarter million dollar prize sadly um University of Chicago and urban Labs Never released the funds so it was rather we have to try to get that resolved with the |
| 1:21:11 | University at some point but uh it's good to see that the idea was taken up by takachar and they managed to win last year as a result and that would eliminate that would you know restaurant burning is is a lot of black soot that ends up in the Himalayan glaciers so along the lines of what Peter was saying this is a great opportunity to re-brighten the planet when it comes to Himalayan glaciers and my straw burning is a key issue there so that's something that we could all make progress on okay thank you very much quick comment |
| 1:21:42 | on one of those um the 44.4401 which for those of you who don't know it is the atomic way to carbon which is why it's called that um but the while their project is quite small they're working on this prototype deposit in Oman it's the biggest exposed predatory deposit in the globe anywhere by a long long way it's a vast deposit I don't know how many billions of tons trillions maybe there is there so it has a lot of potential I think it's worth saying period of time yeah it's a little bit of outcropping of |
| 1:22:18 | the meadow ocean ridge on the land in Norman America yeah exactly yeah excellent interesting hmm so what are they doing that they break it up and um reacting it with CO2 basically or two or two term water or something like I don't know the details of what they're doing but it's basically trying to do an accelerated version of normal uh Bland weathering weathering yeah okay very interesting thank you okay well I think we're we've it's worked out uh so far quite well um we have bit of time a little bit of time yes yes |
| 1:22:57 | please no that's great so thank you Chris um um yeah I mean at the moment the presentation the webinar is not online that I can see I've looked on the mere website just a little bit earlier and the presentation isn't there I presume it's going to be there eventually and I would encourage you to watch it because frankly for me it was a bit of an eye opener I was sort of mind-boggled frankly with the way neoclassical economics Works um so he starts um Steve Keane starts off with a few quotes uh from the |
| 1:23:31 | literature um he's an Australian economic Economist isn't he yeah and it's based in the uh University College of London at the moment okay um so he says things like damage from Three Degrees warming is likely to be around one quarter percent of national income my hunch is that the overall impact upon human activity is unlikely to be larger than two percent of total output and then he talks about three degree warming uh in the word of one of his respondents to a particular query he did would be small potatoes and he says |
| 1:24:06 | he'll take a sharp pencil to see the difference between a world with and without climate change or with and without mitigation completely ignored completely ignorant yeah and he and apparently um most he did a questionnaire of a whole series of economists he also included a small number of natural scientists the natural scientist estimates were between 20 and 30 times higher than the Marine stream Economist but um nordhaus is the guy you're particularly involved and he ignored them and there's a lot of other frankly |
| 1:24:39 | staggering assumptions that they make for example they ignore the whole issue of energy within their uh whole economic system uh they just think their energy is irrelevant right so Steve Keane is as of the same opinion as these other economists or he's just I don't know he's saying they're they're talking a lot of problems yes yeah yeah yeah but but he's yeah he's he's one of the so-called alternative economists right which says the neoclassical economists uh completely wrong and |
| 1:25:09 | that's just about climate change I think I think he he has opinions about them about their economic views on everything Beyond climate change as well but this is obviously focused on on climate change yeah yeah so I was going to say because he's he I find him a very he's up to date and you know smart guy he did seem to be thinks he doesn't feel the need to think the same way I won't try and repeat everything else he said because he said a whole load of things but um the only one thing that did stick |
| 1:25:38 | in my mind was that um the neoclassical economists assume that the relationship between energy and the economy is something like um one to ten and so therefore that a small change in energy only has a is not very significant for the economy whereas actual real data which they ignore shows it's pretty much a one-to-one relationship between the use of energy and economic uh activity um so there's a whole load of stuff like that which he shows and there's quite a lot of slides um so anyway if it comes up I'd |
| 1:26:16 | certainly encourage you to talk to look at it because as a scientist I found it completely extraordinary hmm it sounds very very interesting very well because I've been wondering that myself about the ratio between you know energy So when you say one-to-one energy and and then uh economic activity is it sort of 50 50 or is it saying that you know no basically he showed that looking at data from Individual countries you could show that how the economies went mirrored how the use of energy went so if your economy is in recession your use |
| 1:26:47 | of energy goes down yeah and so therefore there's a one-to-one relationship but the neoclassical economists assume that isn't the case at all they think energy is about only about a tent is important as it apparently is yeah yes so I I he seems absolutely right to me and I can't believe how how stupid they can be um yeah come on sorry yeah um I'm trying to think about the other form was uh I can't remember oh there was um the real extraordinary thing was there was a paper by a very well-known |
| 1:27:21 | Economist the sort of father of the um uh monetary Theory Freedom Milton Friedman could be and he wrote a paper in the 1950s which started all this off basically the whole neoclassical approach um basically he seemed to said if certain assumptions don't fit your um uh models then don't worry about it it doesn't matter and um not very scientific then and the other thing he basically says is they they instead of taking empirical data and fitting it to their models they make assumptions and they use those |
| 1:27:57 | assumptions in their models which then generate of course more assumptions so their whole system is not based on real data as far as I can work out anyway it's I find that a bit hard to believe Chris sounds quite I know but yeah yeah anyway but uh but anyway you're reporting on what Steve Keane said so yeah exactly so thank you very much yeah um okay folks well uh anything else for anyone we've had a very nice chat this evening it's been very interesting as as it always to hit people in this group |
| 1:28:32 | anything else from for anyone oh Grant you've got your hand up yes please Grant thank you the one other thing that I got out of listening to Steve Keane was how the Nord house theorem of uh there is nothing to do no relationship between energy and economies became the mantra for the ipcc yeah they took that as the Assumption and all of their projections have come been made from that basis so the the Nord House Effect has had huge impact on the scientific community and has led to a statement that he made I think this was his statement that we |
| 1:29:22 | are where we are by the actions of political pressure and the oecd working to the Nord house assumption I know it has won the Nobel Prize pointed that out indeed thank you thank you very much grad well thanks everyone I'll um do the usual I've been writing this I've just been kind of processing it very quickly and sending out the video so I hope that's okay um so that you get it sooner rather than later okay everybody uh have a great couple of weeks and uh see you again soon we're having another session oh hang on |
| 1:30:04 | yes yes yes uh yes but when is it then so the 12th uh that'll be the 29th is that boxing day or something 26th Boxing Day yeah good point um well I I don't think so I don't know um I think we'll we'll skip that one and uh so we'll have to say don't don't is uh uh so that's so it's going to be 31st hang on 31st of December and then that's right so it's the third uh no second second the second yeah no hang on sorry no no it's not the second because the 27th is Boxing Day |
| 1:30:57 | and then the second 26th is oh 26 rather 20. so 26 is boxing day so the second is the week that would be the Prague people again so we'll be on the ninth as I can tell right no but I'll I'll check it before I send out the reminder the invitation thank you very much everyone and happy Christmas yeah and you too cheers I'm a little confused when's our next meeting it's going to be the ninth Brian of January thank you 9th of Jan yeah yeah if there's anything you want to chat to me now about Brian sometimes you I don't |
| 1:31:42 | feel like I'm in the chat I know you're busy man doing fine uh no that's great uh looking forward to our next meeting and uh that was a stimulating meeting today yeah absolutely thank you for your input as always Brian and a pleasure take care you too bye-bye and manager I'll follow up with you today I'm uh we're drafting it now great thank you thank you bye bye Brian did you want to talk to me friends hey you're a mute you're on mute yeah only only if you have uh any uh I was uh I'll turn this off |