00:00So, looking at all these news and everything that is going around, I was just thinking
00:08that where are we heading and what's going to happen for the future of this planet.
00:18My guess is as good as yours.
00:22The writing is on the wall.
00:27I don't think any of us need any special assistance now in reading it.
00:41It's not just about the 1.5 degree centigrade threshold being breached.
00:53In fact, they are going to take at least one decade and a half more to officially admit
01:02that as a climate pattern, two or three successive years of average temperature rise do not suffice
01:15by meteorological definition to be called a trend.
01:23Statistically, it can still be called an exception, a fluke.
01:32So it is only by 2035 or 40 that it will be officially admitted that we have breached
01:39the 1.5 degree limit.
01:45The problem is we do not have 15 more years.
01:52At some point between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees, as I have often said, the feedback cycles,
02:04they get activated.
02:11By the time you come around to admitting that you have truly crossed the 1.5 degrees barrier,
02:20you will find that you have already reached 3 degrees or 4 degrees or who knows 6 degrees.
02:35There is so little discussion on feedback cycles in the climate discourse that it astonishes
02:44intelligence.
02:54The Paris Agreement stipulated that we will reduce carbon levels by 45 degrees by 2030
03:11and we will come to a net zero position by 2050 and if we are able to do this much, then
03:23we will be able to limit temperature rise to 1.5 or 2 degrees centigrade.
03:35This was the ambitious target.
03:37Mind you, we were not targeting to reverse climate change.
03:45The target itself was quite lowly.
03:47The target was to do something to limit the rise to just 1.5 degrees and even to limit
03:58the rise to that point, you need to cut down emissions by almost 50%, 43% to be exact by
04:042030.
04:05Now, if that is the macro target for 2030, then all countries were required to come with
04:19their own national deliverables because if the entire planet's emissions are to be cut
04:31down, then each country has to come up with a plan for reducing their own emissions.
04:40So all countries prepared their own plans for 2030 and you know even if we stick to
04:47those plans, all that those plans would give us is a 2.6% reduction by 2030.
04:58First of all, we set a very low target and then what we are doing to or what we propose
05:08to do, not yet doing, what we propose to do with respect to that target would take us
05:15only to the extent of 2.6% compared to the 40% reduction that is needed and that is needed
05:23just to halt the rise to 1.5 degrees.
05:36And the way we are today as we enter 2025, we are all set to exceed the emission levels
05:50of 2010 and 2019.
05:54These are the two reference points that the Paris Agreement uses.
06:00Forget about reduction, forget about 43% reduction, forget out even 2% reduction.
06:06We are actually increasing our emissions and the increase will be even more substantial
06:12by 2030.
06:16So I do not know how the future is any more a surprise.
06:21I said the writing is on the wall, loud and clear.
06:28Mankind has silently decided, voted in favor of a collective suicide.
06:40We are headed towards a mass extinction and we don't want to talk about it because it's
06:49our own choice.
06:51Why talk about it?
06:53You talk about something when there is still something left to be decided.
06:58All that needed to be decided has been done and frozen and there is nothing to be thought of.
07:24Are you getting it?
07:281.5 degrees is a very, very sensitive point.
07:34It's not that arbitrarily some figure was chosen, 1.5 degrees was chosen.
07:41An important reason was this is the point after which the feedback cycles will set in.
07:50They'll start operating.
07:51We do not know exactly when, 1.6, 1.8, 2.0, 2.1, but the risk substantially increases
08:00after 1.5.
08:01In fact, some feedback cycles start even before 1.5.
08:10So those feedback cycles are there and once they start operating, there is no limit to
08:17temperature rise and it becomes irreversible and uncontrollable.
08:24Then carbon addition to the atmosphere does not depend on anthropogenic carbon emission.
08:35You enter a situation where carbon will keep being added to the atmosphere even if human
08:41beings through their activities are not emitting any carbon at all.
08:48Still the planet on its own would keep adding carbon to the atmosphere and therefore there
08:55would be result in temperature hike.
08:59We have come to that point now.
09:01Don't be surprised by individual instances of wildfires etc.
09:09These are going to become daily occurrences, sometimes twice a day.
09:17Once in the US, in the morning, in the evening you hear something from France or Australia.
09:33What are these feedback cycles?
09:36I have repeatedly spoken about them because they are the most dangerous things staring
09:42at us today.
09:46They pertain to ice, they pertain to water and they pertain to wood.
09:53You can classify them this way very simply in three.
10:01What are the feedback cycles pertaining to ice?
10:05Ice being white in color is a great reflector of radiation but when ice melts it exposes
10:18the dark soil stone or sediment beneath and that being dark absorbs radiation.
10:26Since it absorbs radiation its temperature rises.
10:30When its temperature rises more ice melts.
10:33When more ice melts more stone is exposed or soil.
10:40It absorbs more temperature, more radiation and more ice melts and that way a very troublesome,
10:52very dangerous cycle starts.
10:58Similarly the soil beneath the ice contains a lot of trapped carbon and that has remained
11:11historically trapped beneath the ice in the Arctic, in the Antarctic, on other glaciers
11:22in the world, even in the tropics.
11:29When the ice is removed then the carbon that was trapped in the soil, the soil is organic
11:36matter it contains carbon, that carbon is released.
11:41Often that carbon is not just carbon dioxide but methane.
11:45Why?
11:46Because below the ice there is not sufficient oxygen available.
11:52So carbon does not turn into carbon dioxide instead there is an anaerobic reaction leading
12:02to formation of methane and the global warming potential of methane as you know is 80 times
12:09more than that of carbon dioxide.
12:14Then we know of permafrosts.
12:20They are beyond the Arctic and the Antarctic.
12:26The soil is there but the water in the soil remains frozen.
12:34It's not as if there is a layer of ice, there is the soil but the temperatures are so low
12:43that the water in the soil at least in the top layer, the top layer remains frozen.
12:51Since it remains frozen it does not allow the carbon in the soil to escape but the permafrost
13:00is receding very rapidly and it is again releasing carbon dioxide, methane and the
13:13more methane is released the more temperature rises.
13:18The more temperature rises the more ice or permafrost melts.
13:23The more it melts more methane is released.
13:26The more methane, the more temperature, the more temperature, the more melting, the more
13:30methane that's a cycle.
13:35It's just that when the ice melts, mind you, it's not just carbon that you release, you
13:39also release very very primitive kinds of virus.
13:46They were lying dormant beneath the thick ice sheets.
13:54Viruses as you know, they do not die.
13:58Just by being dormant they do not die.
14:01They are in that sense like chemicals.
14:05Water does not die.
14:06In some sense similarly virus too does not die.
14:11For thousands and millions of years viruses can remain safely stored like a chemical beneath
14:20ice or just below surface soil, top soil.
14:28The ice is gone.
14:29What happens to the virus?
14:30Out.
14:31No, that doesn't have much to do with global warming but just you know as a side, as an
14:38appetizer I am serving it.
14:42Then comes to the feedback cycles associated with water.
14:50Water vapor by itself is a greenhouse gas.
14:57You increase the temperature of the oceans and there is more evaporation and that water
15:06vapor traps more heat and that leads to more temperature and that leads to more evaporation
15:12and that leads to more water vapor.
15:16The oceans absorb 90% of atmospheric heat.
15:20They are the biggest sink.
15:24So when you trap more heat in the atmosphere, it is the oceans that get heated up.
15:30The sea level rises on two counts.
15:33One melting of ice, second thermal expansion of water, warm water expands.
15:40So the sea level will rise.
15:42Additionally ice is melting.
15:44So sea level will rise.
15:48Another phenomenon, warm water absorbs less CO2 compared to cold water.
15:56So the capacity of the oceans to absorb carbon dioxide reduces.
16:04So more carbon dioxide remains in the air.
16:11This is what happens at the surface of the ocean.
16:12You come to the belly of the ocean.
16:17What do you find there?
16:23You know of the coral reefs, right?
16:25They are very very temperature sensitive and they are organic in nature.
16:33When the sea temperature rises, the reefs, they decompose and when they decompose, what
16:43do they emit?
16:45Again carbon dioxide.
16:48So a big quantity of carbon dioxide that was lying trapped in the reefs that is released
16:54into the atmosphere.
17:02Even relating to water, peatlands, the coastal areas or sometimes the inner areas that are
17:14always inundated.
17:18So there is soil but there is a column of water always above that soil.
17:27So that soil was never directly getting exposed to the air.
17:34When there is temperature rise or due to human intervention, the water is cleared away.
17:42Then the soil after hundreds and thousands of years suddenly gets exposed to air and
17:49what does that soil release?
17:51Methane.
17:52That soil was covered with water so it never got to react with oxygen.
17:58So again it turned into methane rather than carbon dioxide and then you clear the water
18:04because you want to build a township there or because the water is anyway receding.
18:16Again tons of carbon dioxide gets released from there and tons is a small number.
18:21You always measure it in tons.
18:23It's a figure of millions of tons.
18:32Then you go to the bottom of the ocean.
18:37You have methane hydrates there that are again very temperature sensitive.
18:44Now methane hydrate is not dangerous but the moment it gets heated up, methane hydrate
18:52decomposes to give methane and the more methane is liberated, the more the temperature rises,
18:59the more the methane hydrates decompose.
19:08Then there is wood.
19:09We talked of ice, we talked of water, then there is wood.
19:13Wood is a wonderful thing.
19:18Trees absorb carbon dioxide and turn it into something extremely beautiful called wood.
19:28What is wood?
19:30Carbon dioxide plus soil.
19:35You take soil from below and carbon dioxide from above and the result is wood.
19:41So wood is carbon sequestered.
19:44Carbon has been absorbed and turned into wood.
19:47What a beautiful way of reducing carbon dioxide from atmosphere.
19:54But the same wood turns very dangerous when climate change intensifies because now there
20:03will be extreme weather events.
20:06More heat, more cyclones, more logging, more felling and when wood falls then it becomes
20:18an emitter of carbon dioxide because wood is organic material.
20:24When wood would decay, it would release carbon dioxide.
20:31Instead of becoming an absorber, it becomes an emitter and the more the trees are felled,
20:42the more the trees, that is the fallen trees, emit carbon dioxide and that intensifies climate
20:49change and that leads to the falling of even more trees.
20:59Are you getting it?
21:11Why talk of a localized event like the US wildfires?
21:18The symptoms might be local.
21:23The problem is planetary.
21:30Forget about meeting the problem effectively.
21:36Most of us avoid even looking at the problem because looking at the problem would involve
21:43questioning the very center humankind operates from.
21:51What is carbon?
21:52Carbon is a result of the flawed life philosophy mankind has.
21:59As long as we are conditioned, trained, educated to believe that we exist to be happy and that
22:12happiness is a product of consumption, there would be carbon emission.
22:16I often say it's not emission, it's emotion.
22:21The more we are told that there is value in having pleasurable experiences and emotions,
22:35the more there would be emissions.
22:41Our happiness, our emotions, that's what emissions are.
22:47The more prosperous you are, the more you emit.
22:55The more you chase happiness, the more you emit carbon.
23:02As long as we are educated to find right avenues of joy, we will continue to hunt for
23:14pleasure and this hunt for pleasure is the wildfire that you are seeing.
23:29There can be no political, legal or technological solution to climate change.
23:38Climate change is the final crisis.
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