It's been three years since Greta Thunberg first sat alone outside the Swedish Parliament to call for action on climate change. Now the young activist has become a global voice, continuing to hold world leaders to account on global warming. Six months after President Biden took office, is he doing enough? “This administration is not ready to act as seriously as we need, unfortunately,” Greta Thunberg tells NBC’s Mehdi Hasan.
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Greta Thunberg On Three Years Of Climate Protests
Politicians typically don’t want to deal with climate change, because any solution involves a large expenditure of cash, and upsets corporate interests who line their pockets with dark money. So they passed the buck to whomever is elected to hold their office down the road, and that way, nothing ever has to be solved. They never have to take a stand. They never have to do anything to upset the corporations that line their pockets.
@J W lol no it was dumb enough already thanks. if you would like me to explain to you how to properly explain things i can do that too because what you did there was a baseless assertion supported with an outright lie of credentials that dont exist. “legit scientists” lol. give a name of one LEGIT scientist that actually makes this claim or shut up and sit down.
I gonna tell you something that is unfortunatelly not covered in the media when it comes to climate change. And believe me, it’s worth to read this entire comment to the end, even if it takes a few minutes. Internal documents of fossil fuel companies prove that they were already concerned in the 1950s about possible consequences of CO2 emissions for the Earth’s climate. Furthermore internal documents of fossil fuel companies from the 1970s prove that at this time these concerns have already become a certainty for them. That means that already in the 1970s the fossil fuel industry KNEW that CO2 emissions will cause a dramatic climate change. And now let’s take a look on what could have been done against it in the 1950s until the 1980s:
The “Kværner process” is a technology originally developed in Norway in the 1980s to split hydrocarbons like gas & oil into clean CO2-free hydrogen and solid carbon which can be safely buried again as a waste product. It is a method which uses electricity and it takes 75 kilojoules of electric energy to convert 1 mole of methane into an amount of hydrogen with an energy content of 570 kilojoules. Currently it is in fact the most energy efficient way to produce hydrogen, 7.6 times more energy efficient than electrolysis of water and even more energy efficient than steam-reforming which today is the state-of-the-art method used in the industry. The start-up “Monolith Materials” and their partner Mitsubishi opened a commercial clean hydrogen plant this year in Nebraska which uses the “Kværner process” and they plan to open 30 more plants in the coming years. Hydrogen can be used as a clean CO2-free fuel for cars, trains, ships & airplanes, it is used in the production of ammonia for fertilizers, in Germany and Sweden it is already used to make steel without CO2 emissions and it can be used for heating.
Another method called “Methane Pyrolysis” is known even earlier since the 1960s. “Methane Pyrolysis” does the same as the “Kværner process” but uses heat instead of electricity and has a similar energy efficiency. Although it contains “Methane” in its name it is as well perfectly suitable to process higher hydrocarbons like oil. In 2020 the german chemical company BASF has announced that they have developed “Methane Pyrolysis” to the point where it can be commercialized. In the future natural gas from Russia will be processed to clean CO2-free hydrogen which will be used in the german industry to produce CO2-free steel and for the heating of homes.
Now these two technologies target hydrocarbons. However there also exists a technology called “Direct Carbon Fuel Cell”. A direct carbon fuel cell is a fuel cell which uses coal instead of hydrogen. The first patent for such a fuel cell was granted in 1896 to William W. Jacques, US Patent 555,511. Now a direct carbon fuel cell does produce CO2 because it oxidizes coal, however its efficiency is twice the efficiency of a conventional combustion based generator. This means that one can use only half as much coal for the same amount of power as in conventional coal power plants. Furthermore a direct carbon fuel cell produces a concentrated stream of 100% pure CO2 as exhaust. One can therefore capture the exhaust directly without any complicated & energy intensive additional steps. This CO2 can then be either pumped into empty oil & gas fields, so that it is not released to the atmosphere, or it can be used as an ingredient for carbon-negative concrete like “Carbicrete” from Canada.
So what does all this means? Not only did the fossil fuel industry know about the disastrous consequences of their CO2 emissions, they also already had the technologies to fix this problem decades ago. The fossil fuel industry has spent billions and billions over the decades to influence politicians so that effective measures against climate change were not put into practice. They could have used the money for R&D instead so that the “Kværner process”, “Methane Pyrolysis” and “Direct Carbon Fuel Cells” could have been used already decades ago. This way they could have been able to continue their business, making money AND contribute to climate protection.
businebusiness regardless of what you say the earth is expected to raise 3° by 2100..the US can be 100% free of carbon emissions and it will only effect that difference by .2%..
All of this environmental crap just happens to fall on the leftist agenda who want to raise our taxes to effect that minimal change..
What is ridiculous is destroying the world economy for a natural issue that is occurring..
@Piotr Trebisz I’m 65 years old, and I’ve been aware since the 1960s that climate change was happening. You’re preaching to the choir, honey.
@humangeneric 777 – climate has been changing forever. It’s a natural occurrence
She would own Trump in a debate. 🤣
@N Q <---not called "IQ ANON" for a reason
@Wohooo everybody knows it doesn’t take a man to insult a liberal they insult themselves when they open their mouths
That’s a very low bar. My dog would own Trump in a debate.
WOW! TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP! Your Trump derangement syndrome lingers.
@N Q I doubt it. The Democrats won’t let him. They’d cheat again.
“Americans are optimistic by nature. And if we face this problem head on, if we listen to our best scientists and act decisively and passionately, I still don’t see how we can survive this!”
– Newsroom!
The best science along with satellite data indicates that we are in another period of global cooling. The June, 2021 global temperature were recorded to be 0.01 lower.
@T. R. Campbell That’s insignificant, a statistical deviation.
Greta is lucid on the situation. We’re screwed.
Its a problem that so many grownups act like children. “The dog ate my climate legislation! “
Another problem is so many children drop out of school and have no idea what they are talking about. Science can prove that climate is driven by solar, geological and astronomical events. That is proven science. Rely on real science and not political science.
@T. R. Campbell Wrong again. You just proved that you have no idea what you are talking about. We already knew that though as the ONLY reason you are peddling your BS is for politoical reasons. You loser trolls are all the same.
@T. R. Campbell Well actually, speaking as a scientist, you’re wrong. There are numerous factors involved in climate change and one of those factors… one of the biggest factors… is the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Sometimes, those greenhouse gases can be produced by natural events, such as volcanic eruptions and methane production by bacteria. In our case, those greenhouse gases are being produced almost entirely by human activity and fossil fuels. I would suggest that you stop cherry-picking your “science” and start paying more attention to ALL of the facts… not just the ones you like.
@Tessmage Tessera water vapor is the greenhouse gas that keeps earths temperature from being too cold for life . even GW theory depends on co2 creating more atmospheric water vapor in order to raise temps to a problematic level .
Thank you. Did you know it has stopped snowing in Greenland it’s raining
Greenland will be Rock and plants in 7-10 yrs… maybe an icecap… somewhere… but small.
Snow is over rated.
greenland has gained 400 gigatons of ice so far this year ; above the 30 year average gain . you can find this gov data info on polar portal .
I love Greta Thunberg. I wish you the best
the right wing now believes that u are “evil”….wanting a better, cleaner environment is a bad thing I suppose
Great is a world leader and we must heed her advice. She is fearless and wants to save earth.
Greta
Love the sarcasm!!
How people have reacted to the covid crisis is probably as good a measure as any for what you can expect from them on the climate crisis.
@Amber Scholl Dinosaurs perished from an asteroid impact.
@Tessmage Tessera America is perishing because of DEMENTIA.
@Tessmage Tessera So I guess we have no control over the planet. When our time comes it is all over.
@Tessmage Tessera Did your sock puppet tell you that?
@Amber Scholl Your childish opinions will never be important.
Mehdi dude, we passed 1.5 degrees Celsius a few years ago, and now we’re going to blow by 2-3-4 degrees until most earthlings are dead
Oh well. Everything ends.
I the span of 2 years we went from having 30 years to having 20. So looking around you at people who won’t get vaccinated… how much time do we really have to pull this together? She’s more optimistic than I.
I have seen about 10 different tipping points. At the end of each tipping point of the world was supposed to have collapsed. It didn’t happen. People understand now that climate is driven by solar, geological and astronomical events. We now see the benefits in this light natural uptick in CO2 because of the record crop production we have seen last year and likely this year also. So far all we have seen is good.
@T. R. Campbell, you’re staggeringly myopic.
Try looking at regions of the world other than your backyard.
We still need to be optimistic and work to help our world we can’t give up
the UN said we had ten years til catastrophe , in 1989
“… warning that the window for action is closing, in some areas it’s already closed…”
I absolutely hate when I hear people use this type of language.
No. The window for action isn’t closing. There is no foreseeable point in time where we can say “Mission failed. There is no reason to take further action.”
We’ll miss goals, we’ll suffer consequences. But continuing to not act will continue to make things worse.
The reason people wont listen is they are like addicts. They are addicted to consumption.
@Trump’s Lies Obviously true, yes.
Capitalism without bounds resulting in millions if not billions of products that aren’t needed which sucks up the world’s resources while pumping out pollution and garbage.
Societies addicted to consumerism and the emphasis on industries that really don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things (sports, tourism, movies, etc…) yet rake in billions of dollars that are pretty much wasted.
Capitalism only works if you have a world with infinite resources, zero worries about damaging the environment and an ever continuing growth of the planet itself to support an ever growing race of wasteful humans.
@Tessmage Tessera And you checked when my account was created why? And what did you comment offer? NOTHING
@Amber Scholl No, “Amber”, people in America murder each other with handguns every day over whatever they think is important. Maybe if you and your boomer loser pals invested in “socialist” programs like education and housing and spent less on the military and the NRA we would be able to live together with less horror, fake account guy.
@Tessmage Tessera <--- best wingman ever
Hi Greta your beautiful and smart. That’s why the powers that be are scared of you.
As a Swede I love her and so proud she’s now one of earth’s more important people.
She’s no more important than Charlie McCarthy was in his time
@Herbert Brown The overwhelming majority of human beings disagree with you. Have a nice day. If you can.
@Herbert Brown Jeff Dunham’s Achmed
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it.” Upton Sinclair. The problem with so many environmental protestors is the lack of understanding this. Rich people will never give in if a major component or the only source of their wealth comes from destroying the environment…especially if they can dodge the consequences or another generation will pay the price.
She is way smarter than a Trumper by about 💯 years.
Sad so sad love 🥰😘
“There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” J.R.R. Tolkien
Scientists: “this is what California would look like if Antarctica melted”
Me: *grabs coat, flamethrower, and plane ticket
“I don’t want you to hope for the future.
I want you to panic.”
– Greta Thunberg 2019
In 2021 there are still way too many people in charge telling lies just so they can go back to sleep.