David Friedberg — How Technology Solves Our Climate Crisis

David Friedberg is a co-host of the All-In Podcast and the founder and CEO of The Production Board, a holding company focused on addressing the earth’s problems via technology. Friedberg joins Big Technology Podcast for a conversation about how, specifically, we might be able to solve our climate crisis with tech. Join us for an in-depth conversation on earth's most pressing issue, filled with concrete examples and a healthy dose of optimism. Stay tuned till the end where Friedberg discusses nuclear fusion's awesome potential.

[Gorumpl]

Let's all hope that Friedberg can start having more influence in Washington. He's fantastic.

[xSkidMarx]

you’re asking the questions i wish would get brought up on All In, great interview!

[billandrews]

I can't understand how people can be so stupid about CO2.

It is 250F degrees above the atmosphere, only 76F degrees below it. CO2 cools the earth it does not warm it. More CO2 will cool it more not warm it.

In 1856 Unice Foote showed that a bottle filled with CO2 versus bottles filled with oxygen and hydrogen, absorbed sun heat raising its temperature while the others did not.

The same amount of heat entered into the bottles with oxygen and hydrogen, but passed safely through them and exited the other side of the bottle. But not so with the bottle of CO2. Some of that heat remained in the bottle with the CO2. The heat was unable to safely pass through the CO2 as it did with the oxygen and hydrogen.

7 years later Tindal did similar experiments showing how CO2 blocked heat's passage through CO2.

In 1896 Svante Arrhenius published his mathematical calculation nailing down the proportions by which water vapor and CO2 block heat's passage through them writing:

“The intensity of radiation for any group of rays should always diminish with increasing quantity of aqueous vapor or carbonic acid traversed. If a ray of heat, corresponding to the angle of deviation 39 degrees 45 minutes passes through the unit of carbonic acid, it decreases in intensity in the proportion 1: 0.934 (log = -0.0296), the corresponding value for the unit of water-vapour is 1: 0.775 (log= -0.11105).”


During the first 50 years of the 20th Century, more precise experiments were done by Plass, Kondrat'ev, Kaplan Sasamori, Yamamoto and Fritz Moller, using more sensitive equipment.

All men reported the same. As stated by Arrhenius, when they increased the moles of CO2 or water vapor in their test chambers, LESS heat passed through the chamber, causing the test plot of earth to give off less heat reducing the greenhouse effect.
While decreasing CO2 content in the test chamber increased the amount of heat that was able to pass through the test chamber increasing the heat reaching the test plot of earth and increasing the amount of heat it gave off.

CO2 ABSORBS HEAT preventing it from passing through the CO2.
How is this simple fact impossible for so many people to understand?

Businessmen need to stop talking about Physics.