Zero to Hero? Achieving Net Zero Emissions

To stop the world from heating, and halt climate change, we need net zero. But how? How could we get humanity's overall emissions to zero? And is this global warming goal just a pipe dream? Now the International Energy Agency (IEA) have highlighted a plan to get there by 2050, with the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees. So what does the plan look like... and could it actually work?!

#ClimateChange #climatecrisis #netzero #cop28

==MORE INFO==

==THANKS==

Thanks to Richard Black for sanity checking my IEA description.

Pope photo by Long Thiên
South Bay Power Plant Implosion by Port of San Diego

[ClimateAdam]

Quick note! The IEA report is all about reaching net zero by 2050, but the latest research (published just a couple of days ago) indicate this is likely insufficient for limiting warming to 1.5°C. Still... as I've always said: every fraction of a degree matters. And it's never too late to stop punching ourselves in the face. Net zero in 2050 would still be worlds better than net zero in 2060!

[robinandelizabethhill]

As always, I enjoy your thoughtful approach. I'll just add that there are some impressive improvements in geothermal energy that has the potential to provide unlimited energy 24/7. Its not just solar and wind.

[ashnia]

Would love more content on the role of animal agriculture in this process!

[simonhorlick]

I think you really hit on something at 5:30. There are a lot of people on social media that genuinely think they know better than experts. It's scary.

[qbas]

Another excellent video Adam!

Only small issue - almost no mainstream politician is aligned with this goal.

[vukmarko]

Battery storage as a solution for renewable energy? Please ask any mathematician to calculate how much land such storage facilities would take up. The same goes for "carbon capture". Utter nonsense.

[JohnnyBelgium]

Professor Simon Michaux has calculated that we don't have the minerals for one 25 year generation of renewables. And even so, it represents a massive ramping up of mining and industry. I wouldn't count on recycling either.

Meanwhile, our ancestors went for about 3 billion years without electricity.

The only hope for life, I think, if you want hope, is peak oil and peak fertilizer.

[vinamacias]

Adam really pulled out the fancy animations near the end of this one. Great video as always!!

[DrGilbz]

Thanks for laying out some of the solutions, Adam! It's nice to have some inspiration and motivation every once in a while...

[tommclean]

In addition to underestimating the growth of solar, the IEA has also consistently overestimated the grow of nuclear power. Globally, nuclear power output has remained at the same level for the last two decades while almost every year the IEA as projected growth. Increasingly cheaper long-duration storage solutions are going to push the floundering nuclear power industry off of even the iEA's scenarios. Thanks for the video. Always thoughtful and thought provoking.

[quartytypo]

Our guiding principle has always been, "If it feels good, it is good." We will never abandon our philosophical foundation.

[oleonard]

The fundamental problem has never been our ability to get this under control. We have had the technology in some form or another, for at least 50 years. The problem is we have a powerful industry with deep pockets. That has been running, a very successful campaign, of psychological and economic warfare and lobbying to stop progress.

[CanadianPermacultureLegacy]

Nice video. Just found you, going to binge a bit of your stuff. I'm a nuclear engineer with 20 years in the industry, and run a sustainability youtube channel. I discussed this report on my channel (well, the one by the IESO, which was extremely similar) with a video called "this is your wakeup call", and just to summarize: these reports by IEA are fairy tales: I hate to say it but it's just not going to happen. Unfortunately. There's a few reasons why, but most of them are people related. For example, needing roughly 5x as much nuclear as we have now. Massive bottle necks in nuclear grade boilermakers - and the lead time on some of these parts/people are upwards of 10 years. If we made the shift a decade ago, we'd still likely be too late to react. That doesn't mean that we should be apathetic and do nothing, but it does mean that we need better plans, because these ones are pipedreams. Again, I would have had a different perspective prior to gaining 20 years experience in the clean energy sector. A theoretical understanding of our problems is really important and great, but a practical understanding of how to implement them is really crucial here.

A lot of this stuff is good to say, and important to drive change, but we also need to know where the limitations/bottlenecks are, so we can see which steps are reasonable (planting trees and expanding renewables) and which ones are not (90% renewables by 2050).


One big thing coming is that the peak demand is going to shift from day to night, as people get more EVs and plug them in. This makes an even harder case for solar, since you now need more batteries, which are already going to be resource constained. It does however make a bigger case for nuclear. And, no suprise that a nuclear engineer says this, but nuclear is probably the biggest pass/fail test we'll have. Do we start enough nuclear projects soon enough? Because the other renewables, they won't happen anywhere near at the rate that the IEA or IESO thinks they will.

Also, a critical thing never discussed is "should we"? The current plan is to take our current economy (which is essentially 200% earth overshoot) and transition it to a green economy, ignoring the very fact that we're in overshoot. Then, with equity factored in, it's estimated that we need 6 earths of materials to do this. So why isn't this being discussed anywhere? Degrowth is the single most important thing we need to do, and it's something that we'll either do (hint: and we never will), or we will have degrowth forced upon us (through droughts, famines and extinctions). The longer we wait to react, the harder the forcing function will be, and it's not out of the question whether that forcing function leads to complete human extinction (due to loss of topsoil, food web and ecosystem collapse, etc).

Climate change isn't just "warming the planet". It's not just "unstable weather". It's not just CO2. It's complete and utter ecocide, and we can pull all the carbon out of the air that we want, and NOT fix overshoot, and we will still go extinct. So we need to wake up and get fixing the root cause, and that's overshoot. I.e. climate change isn't the problem, it's the symptom. The problem is overshoot, and it's symptoms are much more numerous than just climate change, it's ecosystem collapse, loss of topsoil, anthropocene extinction rates at 5000x above baseline, insect collapse, ocean acidification, blue ocean events, all the various feedback loops (not just climate but food web collapses as well), etc.

We face about 20 individual existential threats to continued existence, simultaenously, and all we're talking about is climate change, and all the "solutions" to them are not only "just words" they also aren't executable plans based on reality. Most of them are completely energy-blind.


Cheers for the video, keep up the good work, for the right cause. We need to raise an army, and we need massive societal reprogramming, and I'm glad there are more and more of us out there, spreading the message to get up to task, immediately.

[HerSnottyDisgrace]

Thank you for all the hard work you put into explaining these issues in easy to understand ways. I’m in the Netherlands with elections coming up, and for the first time in more than a decade, we have a chance of getting a prime minister who is fully aware of the need for fast and radical climate action (Frans Timmermans, former European Commissioner for climate, who worked on the Green Deal in the EU). But… He will probably be defeated by the more right wing, more “conservative” guys. It’s enough to make me a little cynical about ever getting to a place of enough progress, unfortunately.

[CarbonCopy]

Ok… sounds interesting, however, solar and wind as a base load? Really?

[avastos]

Great video, but I think a part you are missing from your analysis is that economies right now rely on continuous growth, and according to the science we have, there’s no real way to detach economic growth from energy use.If we don’t change our economies to not require growth, then it’ll be nearly impossible to decarbonize as much as we need, let alone curve other extractive and unsustainable methods we are using to keep our economies growing.

[Jerundd]

Good video, although you forgot to deal with the significant difference between net-zero CO2 and net-zero GHGs. Even countries tend to mix them up and fail to realise the massive difference between them. If you want to reach net-zero GHG in 2050, you should have reached net-zero CO2 probably around a decade earlier, which has massive implications for your mitigation pathway (and also the extent of negative emissions you need). I am currently working on a paper on this, but it is pretty crazy how almost everyone (including country leaders) seem to mix them up all the time.

[garneybaker]

Climate Adam, please share your knowledge with the Premier of our Province, Alberta Canada, as she completely feels that the transition away from fossil fuels is impossible, without sacrificing reliability and safety

[mplaw]

1. There is no physical mechanism by which a gas can absorb energy without at the same instant creating an equal and opposite emission spectrum and in the open atmosphere of our planet there is in any case nowhere for energy to hide, other than in ice or water. Carbon dioxide can not absorb and preserve energy. At no stage is cooling prevented and even if it was, that would not increase the originally achieved maximum temperature. A blanket can at best maintain your body temperature, it can not add heat and give you a fever; it does not make you warmer, it just keeps you warmer.


 2. Quite the opposite. The earth would be warmer if there was to be no water vapor in the atmosphere and by some margin (but only during the hours of sunshine of course). Observational evidence can be seen on a daily basis when comparing maximum temperatures in deserts that have coastal fringes (e.g. Sahara, Namib and Atacama), where it will be seen that there is a direct link between humidity and maximum as well as minimum daily temperatures. Absence of water vapor allows more of the sun's radiation to reach the ground and thus create a warmer earth locally when compared to an atmosphere that holds greater water vapor and is at the same latitude. Conversely, the absence of water vapor will allow greater cooling at night whilst high humidity areas benefit from greater preservation of warmth, a sort-of “greenhouse effect” in reverse.


 3. That statement only holds true in high humidity areas and then only during the hours of darkness. The presence of water vapor creates a cooler daytime atmosphere and a less cold (not warmer) atmosphere at night. At no stage is heat added nor created by the presence of water vapor or any other substance. In any case, earth is already enveloped in the perfect “blanket”: the vacuum of space - void of matter and having no temperature of itself, we could not ask for a better insulation. As per #1 above, a blanket can at best maintain your body temperature, it can not give you a fever and neither can a thermos make its contents warmer. 


4. If ever there was equilibrium between temperatures on earth and solar irradiance, the weather as we know it would cease to be. As is, solar radiation often varies more from mile to mile along any longitude or latitude than anyone could ever imagine and all climate related “averages” are purely mathematical entities that bear no relation to the actual situation at almost any point on our planet other than perhaps the coldest areas of the poles during their respective long periods of winter darkness when there is not enough energy entering the local climate system to create the greater variations witnessed in more temperate climate zones. Just looking at the maximum and minimum temperature of a particular place in a moderate climate zone and deriving an “average daily temperature” from such observations bears no resemblance to the ever-changing temperatures throughout the day. In between the observed maximum and minimum temperature of the day, it could have hailed or snowed or rained or have been overcast in several episodes. The struggle to reach equilibrium is what makes the weather so unpredictable and equilibrium can never be reached.


 5. A brand new Law of Physics here, where parts within a system can behave contrary to the 2nd Law but the whole obeys. Only in “climate science” can such chicanery be accepted as academic judgment. Thermal energy cannot flow into itself, only into something that has less energy than itself. That's a law of nature, not a law of “systems”.



 6. A photon will not be able to raise the temperature of the object it is hitting if that object is at an equal or higher energy level. In IPCC graphics, that photon warms the earth and the process starts again - quite impossible (see IPCC graphic below). As per #5 above: Thermal energy cannot flow into itself, only into something that has less energy than itself. That's a law of nature, not a law of “systems”. 


7. Thermal insulation in the setting of our open atmosphere does not make the system one degree warmer than it would be without that insulation (the widely accepted “insulation” being the “greenhouse gases”, not the air itself (nitrogen, oxygen)). For a given energy input, a resultant maximum temperature is achieved and regardless of the amount or type of insulation, that maximum temperature can not be increased. As per #1 above, a blanket can at best maintain your body temperature, it can not give you a fever and a thermos does not make the contents warmer, it merely slows down the rate of cooling.


 8. An “infrared greenhouse effect” (whatever next?) would need “greenhouse gases” to hang on to received radiation and only water has that ability which is best seen during the hours of darkness, not whilst the sun is adding energy, when in fact water and water vapor keep soaking up energy and prevent the atmosphere from warming up as much as it would without water and water vapor (quite the opposite to what is being proposed).


9. A 77 degree average surface temperature due to the purely radiative impact of the greenhouse effect? Radiant units do NOT combine in reality - 101 W/m2 directed at a blackbody that's radiating 100 W/m2 raises its energy to 101 W/m2, not 201 - but in the much heralded Kiehl-Trenberth budget they DO combine. Let's look at the numbers, then.
According to the accepted Kiehl-Trenberth radiation budget (see below), the earth's surface averages 168 W/m2 for solar absorption. K-T has the surface lose much of that energy by convection and evapotranspiration, though, so that 324 W/m2 of back-radiated power brings the surface up to 390 W/m2, corresponding to 15°. But in this case we'll reduce convective and evapotranspirative heat loss to zero, which leaves us with the original 168 W/m2. Now, within these parameters, how much extra back-radiation is required to bring the surface up to 77°? SIX HUNDRED EIGHTY FOUR W/m2, for a total of EIGHT HUNDRED FIFTY TWO W/m2, which corresponds to 77°. (Bonus question: If the greenhouse effect generates enough radiative power to raise the earth's temperature to 77°, but most of this heat is dissipated, then why is there no sign of this excess energy being blasted away from the earth? Satellites only see the earth emitting 240 W/m2.) The average solar irradiance for a blackbody earth - one that absorbs every photon the sun can provide - is 342 W/m2, corresponding to an average temperature of 5.5°. Yet here illustrious academia estimates conjure 852 W/m2 out of nothing 


10. “Radiative equilibrium” is an arbitrary construct to BEGIN with. You just subtract a planet's reflectance from the available irradiance and divide by 4. That's IT. There ARE no other steps. Since Earth reflects about 30% of sunlight, then, 1368 W/m2 × 0.7 = 957.6 W/m2. Dividing by 4 gives you 239.4 W/m2, so that becomes earth's equilibrium figure and this corresponds to a temperature of 255Kelvin. Now, is the earth's average SURFACE temperature 255K? No, it's warmer. So you say that “somewhere up there” is where earth's radiative equilibrium is to be found, somewhere in the troposphere. It's all so silly. But once you convince yourself that the earth's temperature is NOT principally determined by the surface, you can convince yourself that it IS determined by the atmosphere and that “greenhouse gases” RAISE the “equilibrium point” higher and higher. And as you see, you can even go as far as asserting that the surface absorbs no sunlight. The Settled Science Unsettled In spectroscopy, an absorption spectrum does not mean that energy is actually absorbed; it means that an equal and opposite emission spectrum is created, indicating that intercepted energy is dissipated, scattered, re-radiated at different frequencies. By looking only at the absorption spectrum gives the wrong impression, as so clearly illustrated by the overall emission spectrum of earth as seen by the satellites. Radiation input from our sun equals emitted radiation from the earth back into space, in expected accordance with the basic and well-proven laws of physics. No energy is lost nor created, whereas the widely and incorrectly accepted “greenhouse” mechanism has it that carbon dioxide somehow re-radiates the same amount of infrared energy towards space as well as back to earth, thus apparently doubling the energy quantity - quite an impossibility yet described in great detail by the greatest institutions on earth - see below for the latest list. The UN's IPCC graph reproduced yet again below is the classic and accepted view of the mechanism by which the earth gains heat, but this mechanism can not exist; if it did, our energy problems would have been solved long ago by the engineering community: “Surface gains more heat and infrared radiation is emitted again” - if only that were true!

O'Sullivan, John; Schreuder, Hans; Johnson, Claes; Ball, Tim; Anderson, Charles; Siddons, Alan; Olson, Joseph A.; Hertzberg, Martin. Slaying the Sky Dragon - Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory .




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"Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions.Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1954)

[f.libaax]

How do you manage to stay so positive? Seriously. I done with it. I mean, while the biosphere is already pretty much destroyed, a certain OPEC state is celebrating the voluntary reduction of oil production to one million barrels per day by hosting the Winter Olympics in a desert. At this point, it is probably healthier to look around for a few hectares of land for self-sufficiency and to follow the symbol politics from afar.