Climate Basics Podcast

Water scarcity & Desalination: First, let’s talk about why desalinisation is necessary. Essentially water - fresh water drinkable water - has always been a key factor in survival, that's for anyone, humans especially. Traditionally, when you look back on history where there's water, that's where people have put their settlements. That's why so many of the greatest cities in the world are coastal or on huge rivers. The default regular supply of fresh water is what allowed those big populations to flourish and go centers of industry to take hold. You might not realize it but machines actually use a lot of water too, especially in construction and materials fabrication as well as in the production of various chemicals. You can only grow so large until you get to a point where you're utilizing all of the fresh water that's available to you nearby that's when Society started building aqueducts in rome, qanats in arabia and persia, canals in china and sout...

Hormuz, Malacca, Suez and Panama Canals - why are these established trade routes seemingly destabilizing all at once after functioning for decades or centuries, how do they impact global trade, and what could life look like without them Intro: Tradie is important, of course. And throughout history , much of that trade has been on the water. Today, 80% of world trade volume is carried by sea. That includes most of our foods, fuels, goods - everything. Hormuz What it does: Connects the persian gulf (One of the Seven Seas of antiquity!) and the middle east (Which has been a center for economic and scientific advancement many times through history, from Sumeria to Babylon to the Bhagdad house of wisdom) to indian and african ocean trade areas. It’s been a transit hub as long as civilization has existed. What is moved through it: petrol, which includes nitrogen fertilizer used globally as a crutch for short-term agriculture yields. Who is doing the moving: ~90% of the crude oil g...

Greg and Ty speak with journalist and author Jonathan Mingle, whose work explores the complexities of energy infrastructure and its implications for communities and the environment, emphasizing the intersection of energy policy, environmental concerns and community activism. We discuss his recent NYT article about the long-term global impacts of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Jonathan's thesis is that this Iran War reminds all nations of the fragility of the oil & gas trade. As a country, you can build up your domestic infrastructure (i.e. ports, pipelines, factories and residential) to receive LNG or oil efficiently. But the geopolitics of the world will always remain out of your grasp and you will be forever subject to the whimsy of the fossils-producing nations and to the superpower nations. The world lived through the 1973 oil embargo / shock and the changes arising from that event was significant, including: the creation of the IEA (International Energy Associa...

South America is a diverse place, with many different biomes, cultures, industrial forces, and approaches to ecological cultivation. Large swathes of latin america are protected and/or undeveloped lands, and nearly half of all electricity generation comes from hydropower. Overall across latin america and the caribbean, 65% of energy comes from renewables, far higher than global average South America also recently reached an important benchmark - no new coal power plants! They still have some in operation, but many countries are using coal less and less, moving towards net zero faster than many other regions. On the other hand, there are over a hundred methane gas extraction facilities, and some nations like argentina and venezuela have tied their national economies to fossil fuel production, which might offset the efforts of nations like chile and brasil which have emerged as renewable energy leaders. Chile’s Atacama desert is dry, sunny, and sits at a particularly high elevation, ma...

Indonesia is a country of 280 million+ people, located on approx 17,000 islands located close to Australia. 17,000 islands and over 700 languages; it is a diverse population that is doing well economically, with recent annual economic growth around 5%. Unfortunately for the world, Indonesia is also a powerhouse fossil fuels consumer, with over 90% of their total energy consumption being in the form of coal, oil and natural gas. Further problematic, coal represents over half of their fossil fuel use and they have a domestic supply, which they mine and export (in addition to domestic use). Given the nature of their country - 17,000 islands - then transmission and distribution of electricity is an important issue. This bakes in the existing infrastructure of coal / oil / gas generation plants, along with the usual challenges of funding any moves towards installing new renewable energy. Indonesia is a superpower, geographically speaking, as they have "won" the same lottery ...

  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED reading - really top notch, informative and not that long. https://www.shelterwoodforestfarm.com/blog/the-lost-forest-gardens-of-europe Currently, our agriculture industry is essentially an extension of the oil industry, with some major participation from a handful of large chemical companies (Monsanto/Bayer). It produces 20-40% of global CO2! https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food Industrial food production = burn or poison all the plants in an area, mechanically overturn the soil and pump water on site. Plant a monoculture of crops genetically altered to make them resistant to poisons being sprayed everywhere to prevent any other plants, insects, birds or field mice from growing there. Normally, that would result in low nutrition and poor harvest, but we oversaturate the soil with nitrogen and phosphorus industrially extracted from fossil fuels. Once the crop is ready use migrant labourers with no legal rights, paid slave wages to harvest ...