Episode 12 - 2025: A Race Against Time

Scientists call Antarctica the world's Last Frontier.

A vast frozen continent that holds the key to understanding our future.

Researchers are venturing into the western tip.

This harsh landscape is comparable to the surface of the moon.

And it has claimed the lives of many.

They are gathering data on the Doomsday Glacier - so named because it could elevate global sea levels by a catastrophic three meters.

It's the biggest melt happening on earth.

So we should pay attention to it.

Our planet is heating up at a faster pace than predicted.

Already, with immense cost to human life.

This is a climate emergency.

Climate scientists warn that we are already perilously close to tipping points that could lead to cascading and irreversible climate impacts.

In April, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report authored by 278 scientists.

It sets a deadline for global emissions to peak.

2025.

Missing the deadline will make it extremely difficult to avoid a temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius, a threshold experts deem the point of no return.

The world is changing fast, and we humans are in a race against time.

Hello there and welcome to Zeroing In: Carbon Neutral 2050.

I'm Catherine Kobayashi in New York.

Imagine a cup of water under a leaking tap dangerously full to the brim.

Drop a large ice cube in and you'll trigger a spill.

Now imagine that cup represents the world's oceans.

And the surface below, the lands on which we live.

An international team of scientists says the melting of Antarctic ice is one of the 10 tipping points that could lead to an abrupt and severe change.

The host of the talk show "Climate One," Greg Dalton is here to explain more.

Greg, great to have you back.

Good to see you, Catherine.

Greg, our atmosphere has warmed as you know, 1.1 degrees Celsius on average since the Industrial Revolution.

It means we're just a few increments away from 1.5 degrees Celsius the critical point set out by global leaders.

Why is everybody talking about this threshold?

Heads of State and scientists agree to the Paris climate summit that 1.5 is the international goal.

Beyond that, a lot of bad things happen for everyone, especially the most vulnerable.

So how close are we really to reaching 1.5 degrees?

We're getting close.

Before the Glasgow climate summit last year, we were at about 2.1 degree trajectory.

After Glasgow we're headed toward 1.8.

So progress is happening, good things are happening.

We need to remember that pledges are not policies.

And we've seen that policies can change as governments change hands, so we really need an all hands on deck.

You know, we are heading toward the policies on the books are heading toward 2.6 degrees.

That's a lot hotter than where we are right now.

Officials at the World Meteorological Organization recently published an alarming report.

They say in at least one of the next five years, there is a 50/50 chance of the annual "average global temperature" temporarily reaching that all important 1.5 degrees Celsius.

To compare, the chance was close to zero as recently as 2015.

Greg, things are happening at an alarming pace.

What would happen if we miss the target?

Reaching 1.5 degrees even temporarily would be a huge symbolic moment.

It would say that the Earth's operating system is overheating a lot faster than predicted even a few years ago.

The difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees is dramatic.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley described 2 degrees as a death sentence for island nations.

It also means that vicious hurricanes, wildfires droughts for everywhere else.

So we really do need to remember that 1.1 degrees right now we're seeing a lot of impacts.

Every 10th of a degree matters.

That's right.

A new IPCC report says by the year 2100, our oceans could rise by a whopping 2 meters.

That's double the estimate from the last report in 2013.

The revision partly reflects findings from Antarctica.

Researchers used to think global warming would have an insignificant impact on the frozen continent.

Evidence points to the contrary.

Our partners at PBS NewsHour have this report on a scientific expedition to the Doomsday Glacier.

The team is headed for Thwaites Glacier in west Antarctica.

It's as big as the United Kingdom.

And it retreats about 800 meters per year.

The melting ice amounts to 4 percent of the global rise in sea levels.

In 2020, an international group of scientists flew to Christchurch, New Zealand.

From there, they boarded a US Air Force plane packed with people and gear.

They head due south for 3,700 kilometers, and touch down at McMurdo Station, the headquarters of the National Science Foundation in Antarctica.

But they are still more than 2,100 treacherous kilometers away from their camp on Thwaites.

What's more, the weather is terrible, and the airplanes keep breaking down.

But they persevere...

They are working to determine the fate of our planet.

We're at the grounding zone for
Thwaites Glacier right now.

Geophysicist Seth Campbell of the University of Maine surveys a patch of ice.

And he explores some nearby caves.

That thing has never been seen probably.

He uses a ground-penetrating radar on a sled to identify perilous crevasses beneath the surface.

If you zoom in here, we can show you
what they look like.

The way radar works is, we're imaging layers in the snowpack below us.

So, we can see there's crevasse here.

And we can see there's actually a crevasse here as well.

Grounding zones are where ice transitions from grounded sheets to free-floating shelves.

And when warm sea water flows in, they melt.

This zone has retreated 14 kilometers since 1992.

The tip collapsed, became part of the ocean, and caused sea levels to rise.

Researchers believe the ice shelves are breaking up faster because the continent's inner land is lower than the grounding zone.

Their work is crucial to figuring out if or when glaciers will collapse.

Atmospheric oceanographer David Holland is measuring sea conditions under the ice.

He's been at the frontlines of climate change in Antarctica and Greenland for over a decade.

We see the drill rig.

And then the hose goes down
to a hole in the ground here.

But soon after they start, a harsh storm forces them into their tent for 3 days.

If we don't get the drilling started tomorrow, then we run into a whole series of problems.

Basically, there's another storm coming in about three days, but we need three days to get the drilling set up and done.

The sky clears.

And they keep drilling for 36 hours, eventually reaching the seawater some 800 meters below.

They send down a remote-controlled device called "Icefin."

Data on temperature, salinity and current are inconclusive on whether there is an influx of warm sea water.

Two years later, Holland and his team are back on Thwaites Glacier.

You could see a little bit of the ocean because the ice is fractured and the ocean came up between.

And so we took a temperature probe and threw thrown out the helicopter.

It went down to the crack and reported the temperature back to the computer.

And we're like, we got it.

We actually got this information.

And we can say unequivocally it's the warmest water found anywhere ever around Antarctica by measurement.

And it's right there.

That was mind blasting.

And he's observed an alarming change.

The surface of Thwaites is an absolute mess.

Like normal glaciers look like a wheat field in the middle of the United States, just as far as the eye can see.

Big sky.

Homogeneous Thwaites topography.

Looks like looking down on Manhattan here.

It's broken into blocks like city blocks, and each city block is broken into other little blocks like buildings.

And it looks like a city scape, and it's a complete mess.

In the late 1990s.

The exact same thing happened in Greenland in a place called Yaacov Sharp, and that within three years, this big ice shelf, melted like crazy.

Thwaites looks like, it's doing the same thing.

Doomsday or not, Holland believes facts are our best defense.

We're talking about science that is so difficult.

That is so difficult to get data and theory that I've been doing it 20 years and I could see people going another 80 years like that.

Once you start thinking about, your personal feelings or what might be ethically right or wrong and all that.

Once you've mixed that with the physics of nature, you've made a mess of everything, because then you've you actually will start to do science in a way

that will support what you want the answer to be.

It's very possible that Thwaites is not a problem at all, that there will be no change in the climate of the Earth for a thousand years.

And we should look for those answers, not the drama of frightening everyone.

On the other hand, the evidence of what's happening is absolutely not good.

Greg, it's really fascinating to see all the work that scientists do.

They really put their lives on the line to get us the knowledge we need.

Do their discovery show ours are now at risk too?

Most people around the world live near the coastline, so that science matters to people.

Think about airports, roads, bridges, sewage treatment plants, ports, all along the coastline.

So that matters.

Antarctic sea ice, you know, can rise seas around the world.

And I think people don't realize how permanent rising seas can be.

You know, many climate impacts are episodic fires and hurricanes eventually end, you know, heat waves eventually subside.

But when the sea rises, it's basically you know, almost forever in human terms.

And the oceans are also absorbing a lot of the carbon we're putting into the atmosphere.

So our friends in the ocean ecosystems are also being impacted.

Greg, you've also visited the Arctic region.

The science can be a little overwhelming.

This is a big question, but how should people respond?

What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic.

Our weather starts there and disruption in the Arctic brings polar vortexes and other disruptions.

We really need all hands on deck for massive and dramatic emission reductions in all areas of the economy.

And we know governments and corporations have pledged to reduce emissions, but they're still rising.

Quite worrisome.

What's behind this trend?

We still haven't decoupled economic growth from carbon emissions.

And that's especially troubling now.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has spurred the growth of fossil fuels.

High prices are prompting more drilling for oil and gas.

High energy prices are also bringing on more renewables.

We don't know how that's gonna play out.

We do know that emission has been basically flat in the US and Japan per capita for the last 10 years.

They've been rising in China.

But in China, they're still half about an average American or Japanese.

And there's also the issue of capturing the CO2 that's already out there.

What sort of tools do we have at our disposal?

Well, nature provides many tools: forests, kelp, peatlands, eel grass...

All can take carbon and put it in a place that can be stored for a while.

And there's technologies trying to mimic those natural processes.

And here in the United States, plenty of innovative minds are developing new ways to reduce emissions at low cost.

This may not look like a tree, but it acts in much the same way, absorbing and storing CO2.

What's more, it's highly efficient.

It's the result of a joint project by Arizona State University and a company called Carbon Collect.

The mechanical tree is about a thousand times more efficient than a regular tree found in nature.

And that's because it is, if you like, it has more space inside it to collect carbon dioxide.

When air passes through the metal fins, carbon dioxide sticks to the specially coated surface.

The developers plan to sell the captured CO2 as a green commodity for use in a range of industries from carbonated drinks and food, to cement and agriculture.

By deploying them on a large scale and with more innovation, the company hopes to bring the cost down to 100 dollars per ton of CO2, a third of the current level.

And the developers want to create a new market where users and makers of CO2 can efficiently deploy emerging technologies for carbon dioxide removal or CDR.

We're currently looking forward to a what's called a hub proposal of projects.

There is an expectation that we build these hubs with other customers and users of the CO2 as well.

This is a very exciting kind of concept.

I think it goes beyond traditionally where governments have chosen to play.

Stimulating market, helping entrepreneurs with new ideas and technology to go faster is a very good role for government to have.

Electric vehicle and space exploration pioneer Elon Musk is also venturing into CDR.

Last year, his foundation launched a competition with a 100-million-dollar prize.

The challenge is to develop technology that removes 1,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, and ventually... gigatons.

1,133 teams signed up from around the world.

Ideas are plentiful.

Actually getting it done is very hard.

You could take, for example, what about the, you know, the idea of going to the moon is easy.

Going to the moon is hard.

In April of this year, Musk's foundation awarded one million dollars to 15 teams showing significant potential.

They include a start-up called "Captura" from the California Institute of Technology.

The team leader isn't looking to the skies, but the seas.

The ocean is the world's greatest reservoir of captured CO2.

Since humans have begun emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere with the dawn of the industrial civilization, we've been soaking up carbon dioxide into the ocean.

We use the ocean as a reservoir for capture because it's vast covers 70% of world's surface.

It's free, and it's easily accessible.

The world's oceans absorb one-third of our emissions, but they are projected to grow less efficient due to saturation.

Professor Atwater hopes to fix this by removing CO2 already in the water.

The researchers make use of wastewater treatment technology.

They've created a facility that separates the CO2 from other elements and fittingly, it runs on renewable energy.

They plan to test their methods in the ocean, pending approval from authorities.

And their ultimate goal is to put the facility to use in the real world.

They say it could be deployed at offshore oil and gas rigs no longer in use.

In fact, one would say that given the current rate of progress, probably not possible to achieve the goals that the IPCC report sets out in the next five years or so.

We need many different technologies, many different options.

Direct air capture or direct ocean capture sequestration in many different forms.

This is an all hands on deck moment to do carbon capture for the benefit of a sustainable world for the future.

Atwater knows the odds are stacking ever higher.

But he also has faith in the power of his profession to realize positive change.

He's seen it happen before.

So when I was starting out in science as a graduate student, the world had approximately one megawatts worth of solar generating capacity.

And today, this month, the world has just approached its first terawatt of solar power generating capacity, which is a billion times larger than when I was a student.

That was about 35 years ago today.

And that growth has been absolutely historic.

So being funded through the private sector means that you can move fast.

Private capital, once it begins to deploy against problems that the commercial arena feels are important, can mobilize and develop things at scale and at a pace.

That is the thing that have given shape to the economy we have in the world today.

So it's the only way we're going to scale to the scales that are relevant for addressing climate goals.

A challenge like no other for humankind.

And the director of Musk's competition says failures will be just as important as successes.

Do a quick test, learn from the mistakes, scrap it, do another test, make it slightly better so rapid iteration and quick learning is, I think, how we will improve.

By the way, that is the secret that unlocked the dramatic decrease in price in solar.

It wasn't let's build the world's largest solar field.

It was let's take the technology that's already known and innovate dramatically on how to manufacture it more cheaply.

I think the probably the thing we should not do at which we have sometimes done with new technologies in the past, especially ones that might involve collaborations

between the public and private sector, is try to go for everything with one giant facility and put all of our eggs in that basket, so to speak, so that, okay,

we're going to build a mega-project and it's going to answer all the questions and it will cost $25 billion.

We'll take many years to plan in it.

We'll take many years to fund for it.

And we will execute it, and never learn.

Great ideas there.

But the year 2025 is just around the corner.

Can new tech help us in time?

Those technologies are exciting and promising.

They're also in their infancy.

The US government has a new initiative called "Carbon Negative Shot" that aims to get to the cost down to around $100 a ton.

That will require collaboration with researchers, universities, and private sector, public sector, I think, that's important.

We should also remember that the promise of carbon removal shouldn't divert attention the idea that our mess will be cleaned up later.

So we have to stop emissions today.

We still need to reduce emissions.

And the best way we need to do that is really through wind and solar that are economic today.

And history shows us that renewables do have a positive impact, right?

We can look to Germany and Japan in the 1970s.

Japan moved to diversify its fuel sources and by 2003, it had the world's largest deployment of solar in the early 2000s.

Germany moved to decarbonize its grid, created feed-in tariffs that incentivize solar, and now they have a lot of solar in a country not known for its sun.

We should also recognize that Europe across the board is moving to decarbonize and move away from Russia gas right now and going big into renewables.

And we've talked about innovation and systemic change.

But what about us as individuals and the communities that we live in?

How can we help turn things around by 2025?

One of the most exciting and promising things is the tipping point of electric cars are really taking off, there's more choices.

A lot of people don't know that you can get one for $27,000, you can get a Nissan LEAF or a Chevy Bolt that's far less than the average cost of a new car that's more than $40,000.

There's also a $7,500 tax credit that a lot of people don't know about.

And then think about your buildings you can ask your landlord or your employer where's the electricity come from into this building.

Rents in New York City are extremely high but residents could also take into account an apartment's energy rating when deciding where to live.

City officials say the energy used by buildings accounts for nearly two thirds of the city's emissions.

So they require most building owners to display their efficiency ratings near entrances.

I think it's really important to have that kind of permanent visible reminder.

New York City has been a real leader there.

Upstate, Ithaca, is a small town that's decarbonizing its buildings.

Washington DC passed a law recently, that's gonna electrify all new commercial buildings.

I know people are doing that on the home level, putting in heat pumps, putting an induction cooktops.

I personally put a propane tank on a truck and send it away.

And now our home is fueled by electric and induction cooktops and electric heating.

So electrify everything.

It's a great slogan.

Thank you so much for joining us, Greg.

Thanks, Catherine.

And thank you for watching.

We'll leave you with a few thoughts from the trailblazing scientists we heard from earlier.

Let me say one thing here, which is that it's my generation that got us into this mess of it.

And it is the next generation of young scientists, engineers, technologists, industrialists, investors who are going to be needing to lead the way.

And we need to create the pathway where they can take up the call and move us towards decarbonized and sustainable world.

So I think this is a really a generational challenge where we pass the baton from one generation to another responsibly and do it deliberately so that we secure a future for the young people.

We are passengers on this planet.

We are not stewards.

And we are a little bit of unruly passenger, sometimes a little bit not the best.

And so humility and modesty might be much better than the suggestion of the word that we're managing this planet because we're certainly not.

And even if we were, we couldn't do it.

We're just not that smart and we're not that capable.

But we are smart and capable of doing something.

And that's I think the hope is to do our best.