Climate Change
Summary
TLDRThe lecture discusses the urgency of addressing climate change, emphasizing human-induced global warming and its devastating impacts. It highlights the record-breaking temperatures of 2023, the rapid increase in heat-related deaths, and Europe's vulnerability. The presenter reviews data from NASA and the EU Commission, illustrating the dramatic rise in global temperatures and CO2 emissions. The talk concludes by underscoring the economic and ecological challenges of combating climate change and the potential for business opportunities in green transitions.
Takeaways
- 🌍 Climate change is a long-term shift in average weather patterns, leading to observable effects on Earth's climate.
- 🔥 The primary driver of recent climate change is human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels, which increases greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
- 📈 Global average surface temperatures have risen significantly, with a rapid increase in the last few decades.
- 🌡️ 2023 was a record-breaking year for global temperatures, marking the first time all days were over 1 Centigrade warmer than the pre-industrial period.
- 🏔️ Climate change impacts are not limited to temperature rise; they include extreme weather events like wildfires and heatwaves, causing significant damage and loss of life.
- 🌐 Europe is particularly vulnerable to climate change, being the fastest warming continent and experiencing heat-related mortality spikes.
- 📊 The global average surface temperature has been relatively stable for the last 10,000 years, but recent human activity has pushed it to levels not seen for at least 100,000 years.
- ⏱️ The challenge of climate change is compounded by the mismatch between the urgency of action and the slow response times of human, political, and economic systems.
- 🌳 Climate change can lead to mass extinction and significant biodiversity loss, with irreversible impacts if not addressed promptly.
- 💸 Addressing climate change requires a massive financial investment, estimated to be between $100 trillion to $300 trillion by 2050, a cost that underscores the scale of the challenge.
Q & A
What is the definition of climate change according to NASA?
-Climate change is a long-term change in the average weather patterns that have come to define Earth's local, regional, and global climates. These changes have a broad range of observed effects and are driven by human activities, particularly fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth's atmosphere.
How does the burning of fossil fuels contribute to climate change?
-The burning of fossil fuels increases the levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere, which raises Earth's average surface temperature.
What are some natural processes that can contribute to climate change?
-Natural processes that can contribute to climate change include internal variability like cyclical ocean patterns such as El Niño and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and external forcing such as volcanic activity and changes in the sun's energy output.
What was the global temperature record like in 2023 according to the script?
-In 2023, global temperatures smashed records, with each vertical stripe in the 'Stripes' campaign representing a year, where blue indicates cooler than average and red indicates hotter than average. The trend showed a significant rise in global average surface temperatures.
What were the consequences of the heatwave in Europe during the summer of 2022?
-The heatwave in Europe during the summer of 2022 led to approximately 60,000 premature deaths due to heat-related mortality.
Why is Europe particularly at risk to rapidly growing climate risks?
-Europe is not prepared for rapidly growing climate risks and is the fastest warming continent in the world, according to a paper by the EU Commission in 2024.
What does the Paris Agreement aim to limit in terms of global temperature rise?
-The Paris Agreement aims to limit the global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with an effort to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
What does the 'P climatic curve' represent in the script?
-The 'P climatic curve' represents the estimated global average surface temperature for the last 500 million years.
How much time do we have according to the script to clean up the carbon dioxide we've dumped into the atmosphere?
-The script suggests we have about one generation's time to clean up the carbon dioxide we've dumped into the atmosphere.
What are some reliable sources for carbon data mentioned in the script?
-Some reliable sources for carbon data mentioned in the script are the Global Carbon Project, Global Carbon Budget, Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).
What is the estimated cost to battle climate change according to the script?
-The estimated cost to battle climate change is between $100 trillion and $300 trillion globally before the year 2050.
Outlines
🌍 Climate Change: The Urgency and Impact
The paragraph discusses the critical issue of climate change, emphasizing the long-term changes in Earth's weather patterns caused by human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels. It highlights the definition of climate change from NASA and the overwhelming evidence that these changes are driven by human actions. The paragraph also addresses the natural processes that contribute to climate change, such as El Nino and volcanic activity, but stresses that these are overshadowed by human impact. The lecture series aims to educate on the causes and effects of climate change, using data such as the global temperature record to illustrate the rapid increase in Earth's average surface temperature. It also mentions the real-world impacts, including extreme weather events like fires in Maui and heat-related deaths in Europe, underscoring the global and immediate nature of the problem.
📈 Global Warming Trends and European Vulnerability
This section delves into the global warming trends, using graphs and data to demonstrate the significant rise in Earth's average surface temperature. It points out that 2023 was an exceptionally hot year, with all days being over 1 degree Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial period. The paragraph also discusses the particular vulnerability of Europe, which is not only unprepared for the rapidly growing climate risks but is also the fastest warming continent. The EU Commission's report is cited, indicating that Europe's lack of preparedness and the high death toll due to heatwaves underscore the urgency of addressing climate change. The speaker also presents a long-term perspective by comparing current temperatures with those of the past 500 million years, highlighting the unprecedented nature of the current warming period.
🔥 The Challenge of Reducing Emissions
The focus of this paragraph is on the challenge of reducing CO2 emissions to mitigate climate change. It presents data on the cumulative CO2 emissions since the industrial era and the rate at which we are approaching critical temperature thresholds. The speaker explains that even if all emissions were to cease immediately, the effects of past emissions would continue to impact the climate for some time. The paragraph also addresses the difficulty of scaling down emissions by 90%, which is necessary to avoid surpassing the 1.5-degree Celsius limit. The speaker mentions the importance of reliable data sources for understanding the scale of the problem and the potential solutions, such as the Global Carbon Project and the Copernicus Climate Change Service. The paragraph concludes with a discussion of the psychological and political challenges associated with addressing climate change on the necessary timescale.
💸 The Economic and Ecological Costs of Climate Change
In this paragraph, the speaker discusses the economic and ecological implications of climate change. It highlights the long-term planning challenge, comparing human and political timescales with the slow processes of climate change, such as glacier melting. The concept of the 'tragedy of the commons' is introduced to explain why individual actions alone cannot solve the problem, emphasizing the need for collective action and policy interventions like carbon pricing. The paragraph also addresses the ecological consequences of climate change, including mass extinction and biodiversity loss. It concludes with a discussion of the financial cost of combating climate change, citing estimates from Barclays Investment Bank that suggest investments in the range of $100 trillion to $300 trillion will be needed by 2050. Despite the daunting figures, the speaker ends on a hopeful note, suggesting that such large-scale investment could create significant business opportunities.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Climate Change
💡Greenhouse Gases
💡Global Temperature Records
💡Heat-Related Mortality
💡Paris Agreement
💡Cumulative CO2 Emissions
💡EU Commission
💡El Nino
💡Tragedy of the Commons
💡Mass Extinction
💡Investment in Green Transition
Highlights
Climate change is a long-term change in average weather patterns defining Earth's climates.
Human activities, particularly fossil fuel burning, are the main drivers of climate change since the mid-20th century.
Natural processes like El Nino and volcanic activity also contribute to climate change.
Global temperature records were smashed in 2023, indicating a rapid increase in Earth's average surface temperature.
The impact of climate change is evident in events like the 2023 Maui fires and heat-related deaths in Europe.
Europe is the fastest warming continent and is unprepared for the growing climate risks.
2023 was the first year with all days over 1 Centigrade warmer than the pre-industrial period.
The current warming trend is expected to surpass temperatures not seen in at least the last 100,000 years.
Global average surface temperatures have been relatively stable for the last 10,000 years until recent human-induced changes.
The Paris Agreement's 1.5 Centigrade limit was reached in 2023, signaling the urgency of climate action.
Cumulative CO2 emissions since the industrial era have pushed us towards permanently exceeding 1.5 Centigrade.
Efforts to reduce emissions must be scaled up rapidly to prevent irreversible climate change.
High-quality climate data can be sourced from the Global Carbon Project and Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The tragedy of the commons economic term explains the collective difficulty in addressing climate change.
Climate change can lead to mass extinction and significant biodiversity loss.
Addressing climate change requires an estimated investment of $100 trillion to $300 trillion by 2050.
Despite the challenges, there are business opportunities in the green transition and addressing climate change.
Transcripts
we have spent seven
generation of dumping carbon dioxide
into the world's largest junkyard that
is our
atmosphere and now we have about one
generation time to clean it up any
volunteers welcome to follow my lecture
series and today we will talk about
climate
change we will have an overview of what
it's what it is about and what its
impacts
[Music]
are let's start with a definition of
climate change this definition comes
from NASA from the United States this is
a long one but I think that this
definition does not have any extra words
in it so let's try to concentrate on
every word
climate change is a long-term change in
the average weather patterns that have
come to Define Earth's local Regional
and Global climates these changes have a
broad range of observed effects that are
synonymous with a
term changes observed in Earth's climate
since the mid 20th century are driven by
human activities particularly fossile
fuel burning which increas Ines heat
trapping greenhouse gas levels in
Earth's atmosphere raising Earth's
average surface
temperature natural processes which have
been overwhelmed by human activities can
also contribute to climate change
including internal variability for
example cyclical ocean patterns like
elino linia and the Pacific decadal
oscillation and external forcing for
example volcanic activity changes in the
sun's energy output variations in
Earth's
orbit so the planet is warming and it is
not explained by any natural things nor
any external things such as volcanoes or
changes in the sun's activity it is
explained mostly by our own activity the
human
activity of course NASA here refers to
observations say let's see what kind of
impacts we have
had this one wo said that
2023 smashes Global temperature record
and you can see the stripes they are
from show you Stripes
campaign each stripe each vertical
stripe is a year and if that year was
cooler than average then that stri
stripe is blue and if that year was
hotter than average that stripe is red
if you look at those stripes then you
can really see that yes the global
average surface temperatures have risen
a great deal and the IT increase has
been quite fast during the last decades
so the planet is
warming what does it mean it's warming
it's numbers but does it have any real
impact well for example this one this is
from uh summer 2023 Maui
fires death toall hits 80 as officials
say rebuild efforts top 6
billion okay but that was during the
fires the actual death toll was higher
and the cost of course was also higher
and this happened in Maui that is in
Hawaii that is in the United States we
often have the tendency of thinking that
something bad happens in the global
South not where we are but it actually
happens in the western world as well but
okay this is the United States it's on
the other side of the globe so maybe we
don't need to worry about it let's
see this one is a scientific paper from
one of Nature's papers which means that
one from a very high-profile
paper heat related mortality in Europe
during the summer of
2022 doesn't sound very dangerous does
it not until you read the paper which
says that yes probably about 60,000
people died prematurely because of the
heat wve in
2023 if we had 300 planes crashing
around Europe I think we would have had
rather sizable headlines wouldn't we but
when we talk about climate well it was a
bit hard and some elderly people died
yes but not only elderly a lot of people
died and if you have been following the
news uh 2023 was actually hotter than
2022 so probably the death toll in 2023
was higher than in
2022 and let's get further the death
toll in 2024 I'm recording this in July
24 so I don't know but
if someone has been following the news
lately then it's been full of headlines
of of it being extremely hot uh close to
the southern European
countries so this is actually in Europe
also and
interestingly Europe is not prepared for
rapidly growing climate
risks and this paper says that we are
not prepared and we are at risk and
interestingly It also says that Europe
is the fastest warming continent in the
world whoops it didn't happen elsewhere
did
it this paper is not a paper by some
group of environmentalists this paper is
by the EU Commission in
2024 but let's have some numbers and
graphs because they're of course more
convincing than adjectives at least they
should be because numbers speak lower
than words at least they should speak
louder when we talk about environmental
things so
if you look at these curves if you look
at the curve on the left it gives the
global average surface temperature which
is averaged out so it has rolling mean
of 5 years and you can see that yes it
has been warming a lot there are little
bit of ups and downs but the trend is
very very clear for the last decades on
the right hand side you can have the
year to year uh data from a little bit
different data sources and if you look
at the year 20
203 then you can notice that yes it
actually reached the plus 1.5 CRA limit
which the politicians are talking about
because it is in the Paris agreement
doesn't look very good does it a little
glimpse of Hope of course is that there
is a lot of interyear variation which
means that next year and the year after
might be cooler or then
not Seth Burgess deputy director of the
Copernicus climate change service
said about this data that 2023 was an
exceptional year with climate records
tumbling like
dominoes okay what does it
mean is it that we just sort of Hit the
record high in our records that is in
the measurement history like for 150 or
200 years that doesn't sound too bad
does it no not only is 2023 the warmest
year on record it is also the first year
with all days over 1 Centigrade warmer
than the pre-industrial period
temperatures during
2023 likely exceed those of any period
in at least the last
100,000
years oh boy we are great we smashed a
record which has been there for 100,000
years well let's look at that record
because here we have the P climatic
curve this is the estimated global
average surface temperature for the last
500 million years we don't need to worry
about the left hand side because it has
that very old data uh please note that
the x-axis scale is constantly changing
so be careful with that let's start from
the right that is from today we see that
for the last 10,000 years the global
average surface temperature has been PL
pretty even which is to be expected
because uh the Ice Age sort of ended
10,000 years years ago and before that
it was a bit cooler and then we can see
that years in the Eman period at the end
of the emian period or close to the end
of the iian period we had a Peak at
about 100,000 years ago and that is what
samon Burgess was referring to so that
Peak 100,000 years ago was warmer than
what we have
today now interestingly as our globe is
warming up when we have El Nino which
heats the um Planet periodically maybe
every seven years next time or the next
time or the next time maybe 30 years
from now then the temperature will
surface that Peak and now if you look at
that graph when we get above that Peak
100,000 years ago when was last time as
hot as it will be around
2050 five freaking Mill milon years
ago go figure 5 million years ago we
have been able to accomplish all this
within seven generations of polluting
our atmosphere so we are talking about
really huge things we're not talking
about whether we're not talking about
whether it's exceptionally hot or wet
winter or summer or whatever we're
talking about global surface temperature
averages and one
more this is this the monthly data for
last about 80 years uh every curve there
represents one year and if you look at
the colors the old years are sort of
blue like 1940s 1950s and then it
becomes uh blue redder and redder so
they are encoded by those colors so the
colors don't represent temperatures they
represent years age of
data and if you look at that top curve
you can see that the last 12- month
period as of recording this video has
been by far the hottest in
record and really by far it's exceeded
1.5
Centigrades every single
month so now the Paris agreement 1.5
Centigrades doesn't sound very feasible
does it it doesn't mean that we wouldn't
need to struggle and we wouldn't need to
do everything we can to stop
development but now you can see the
magnitude of the problem and the speed
of
progress what causes it well yet another
curve the cumulative CO2 emissions to
the atmosphere from the dawn of the
industrial era that is around
1750 to uh 2022 so that's the dark area
so it's seems that we have been able to
push a lot of carbon dioxide and now
what is a lot if you look at the scale
it's gigatons gigaton is a billion tons
or a thousand million tons by the way
dur during this lecture course I'm using
the American way of saying billion when
I mean 10 to n so 9 zeros and trillion
when I mean 12 zeros be careful with
those it's easy to slip sort of three
digits but anyway we talk about gigatons
and we talk about thousands of
gigatons that's a lot so we have been
quite
productive and now that orange line
there represents the limit at which we
go permanently above 1.5 Centigrades so
with today's emission rate which is
depicted by the hatched area we will
surpass that limit in 20128 and there is
nothing we can do to to keep deep under
that limit because we can stop all our
emissions today or next year and because
actually the emission rate is increasing
not decreasing so we are accelerating it
means that most probably we are going to
smash the limit in 2027 2028 a couple of
years from
now this is the problem we have to very
rapidly stop the emissions or at least
scale them down by by 90% most probably
we will have to swoop up some carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere later on
there are Technologies but it's going to
be difficult at this point I would like
to say a few words about data
sources for carbon data uh there are a
couple of places where you can find very
good very granular uh very high quality
data uh one of them is the global carbon
project and its sister site which is
global carbon budget and they are
exactly what they say you have a lot of
information on emissions you have
information on how much we can emit
before we reach 1.5 Centigrades or 2
Centigrades and so on and then for the
observations uh Copernicus climate
change service
c3s they use a lot of satellite data and
they are associated with the European
Union but also they have a lot of
cooperation with for example ye East the
MWF European Center for medium weather
forecasting and so and so these are
scientifically sound sources for uh
getting climate data or car emissions
data so why is this so
difficult one of the things is time
scale nothing happens today nothing
happens next week nothing happens next
year our human biology is geared towards
where do we get our next meal whom do do
we mate with next and that sort of
things we are not very good at planning
decades or
centuries uh
before and that's one problem nothing
happens in a year things happen in
decades a lot happens in a decade but
then we have some very slow processes
like melting of glaciers which even if
we stopped all emissions today would go
on for maybe a, years years before
reaching some sort of
equilibrium an end state so that's one
thing time scale is difficult time scale
is difficult also from the political
perspective because the time scale of
politicians is usually about four years
um for natural reasons the time scale
for companies may be a quarter or 3
months or it might might be a couple of
years but seldom much longer so this is
a problem the time scale then another
huge problem is that this is a tragedy
of the Commons in the largest possible
scale tragedy of the commons is um an e
economic term uh coming back from the
19th century Britain where people had
their cattle on a common field a village
had a common field and everything went
well when you had say 10 cows on that
field you got a lot of milk and
everything was fine then someone got
rich and bought another cow you had 11
cows well that's a bit of a problem
because then the cows grazing there
didn't have enough grass they didn't
give that much milk then someone else
got rich and got another carow and you
had 12 cows and it was a rational move
for the new cow owners but actually
destroyed everything because then no one
got
milk and this is similar thing we all
should cut our emissions so that we all
would benefit but if I cut my emissions
and the others don't that one doesn't
then no one gets any benefits why would
I jump under the
bus because someone else would get a
benefit so it's a tragedy of the commons
and we know that market economy is not
going to fix the tragedy of the commons
it needs some guidance for example
pricing of externalities that is carbon
pricing but we will talk much more about
that later
on then one problem a biological or
ecological problem is that climate
change will lead to mass extinction it
will lead to huge biodiversity
loss and we can't do anything about it
but we can sort of adjust how huge so we
have to do a lot but then caring about
biodiversity is important but if we fail
to get these climate change things
sorted out then biodiversity will go out
of the window in any case and then
finally battling climate change requires
transactions that are very very very
extremely
expensive how expensive well this is one
estimate we would need to
invest an amount of money that is
globally ranging from 100 trillion to
$300 trillion
before year
2050 so that is actually you know 1 Z 0
and then 12 other zeros so one and 14
zeros or three and 14
zeros a couple of hundred million
million dollar and if you divide that by
25 years which we about have here then
we talk about 10 trillion 10 million
million dollar a year that's a huge
amount of money it's about what
maybe $1,000 per
person in the world per
year and this estimate does not again
come from any group of environmentally
concerned economists this comes from the
very well-known environmental agency
called barlay Investment Bank and if you
know any investment bankers you know
that they don't usually go with a flow
when it comes to softb values but if you
look at the link you see that it says
that green transition driving force
behind a radical economic reink so even
investment bankers who have to think
decades they realize that yes we'll have
to rethink a lot but
okay I want to end with sort of an
optimistic notion and of course that
optimistic notion is that if we have
something that we as the human need to
invest $1 trillion a year then there
will be a lot of business opportunities
and let's see how we can seize them see
you next time
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