I'm so glad he's one of the people who presents well researched topics, not like the KZfaqrs that thought solid hydrogen is a "technology" (it's a mathematical theory) Sources are always a must when talking about science, especially when even peer reviewed paper can still be a scam

Well said!

Wow, thank you! :-)

@@acasccseea4434 - True, it depends on Who the Peers are and if the multiple respected peers have reviewed and confirmed the paper is valid science.

latest news about this Co2 to starch. TianJin(China) successfully product tones of starch and the efficiency is great.

Conservation is always good. No doubt. The issue I have is too many people are negative on humankind. Humans are not just a destructive force. People do good. So the future is bright. My issue is on the industrialization of food, producing it straight from electricity is a little weird. It might have energy, but will it have the needed nutrients for health? As far as CO2, I think it is not a problem in the atmosphere until 800 ppm. Part of the increase in corn yields is due to more CO2 in the air. So right now the focus should be efficiency and advancement of tech. And nuclear power. The issues I see is that Solar power takes the same amount of land as using fields of plants. In Florida, there are solar power plants being built that use up about 650 acres of land to produce 74.9MW of power. As far as your comments on the grasslands becoming a desert, etc. Well if the temps increase but rainfall increases then the productivity of the land will increase. Lots of complex issues. But politicians and regulations are not the answer. Politicians will just increase taxes and higher taxes cause more pollution as people work harder to earn more to pay them. Then the destructive governments build world ending nuclear weapons with them and also fuel their military that guzzles fuel and materials that could go to regular struggling folks.

@@superchuck3259 I've never heard anyone that understands atmospheric composition say 800 ppm is the threshold of being problematic. I guess you haven't been paying attention to the changes from 300 to 450. Also we are already seeing precipitation patterns change. Higher humidity doesn't necessarily mean more rain in areas that need it. Western KS/eastern CO are already starting to transition from grassland to high desert. MN is now able to plant longer season corn hybrids, one KZfaq farmer is planting 105 day corn in MN where 95 day was the norm when I was a pup, because of rising temperature. A lot of non sequiturs in your reply.

Quite right!

@@superchuck3259 - You said, "Well if the temps increase but rainfall increases then the productivity of the land will increase. " You seem to be missing the part where rainfall declines due to global warming, but severe storms increase in both magnitude and frequency. Which means you get more flooding and destruction while also having drought conditions the rest of the time. This is NOT good for land productivity.

@@superchuck3259 you also said, "Politicians will just increase taxes and higher taxes cause more pollution as people work harder to earn more to pay them." Not sure what taxes have to do with this line of thinking, but people working harder will not cause more pollution. Consumption is the source of pollution, whether it be a bagel, a TV, a factory, or a highway. All these things are rooted in consumption. Taxes are just another bad form of consumption. Until we learn to live with much less consumption (or much, much better management of resources, i.e., RRR), we can never hope to prevent drastic climate change.

Agreed! We should develop ASAP, uh, ASAP 😁

Why not just plant a tree that does a lot more than simply capture carbon

Yet you didn't execute, so it was pointless?

@@harmhoeks5996 sure, it's a one man Job

Uh, converting atmopheric CO2 into food or something that eventually gets burned doesn't help globap warming. It still ends up back in the atmosphere before getting cycled again. We've returned billions of tons of carbon, that used to be sealed away, to active cycling. Cycling harder or plugging more things into the cycle doesn't reduce the amount present in the atmosphere by enough to matter.

Love these stupid stories . In a hundred years we will be making food from air. So many people now think food comes from a lab. Some will say margarine is made in a lab but when you explain that yes the lab changes soybeans they think things can be made from nothing.

but they maybe only use it as it is a byproduct of other agriculture production. maybe some other chemical - if synthesized anyways - would be even more efficient.

@@nothingisreal6345 @Nothing IsReal Your correct. Uses are found for it, because starch is ridiculously cheap to produce and extract. It is usually a byproduct - or at least a coporoduct.

Billions of soldiers in armies around the world could use this starch to iron their BDUs with: a guaranteed long-term market. (BDU = Battle Dress Uniform, i.e., military uniform).

Do you really want the human race to all be diabetic by the age of thirty. Starch is used in loads of surprising ways you wouldn't expect and as you mentioned is being produced like crazy. Now we know why the population is getting fat, diabetic. insulin resistant and getting allergic to things that in the recent past would not have bothered them. The modern glues are not derived from starch they are petroleum based. Try rotting a few amazon boxes you will be left with strips of the glue that neither bacteria nor fungi can break down.

Not just less land, but non arable land. Can't grow corn in the Atacama desert, but you can sure put up solar pannels.

It's much more cost-effective to simply recycle plastic into fleece and other fibres. Even inventing a synthetic fibre with the qualities of cotton (or any other natural fibre) would be more pragmatic than trying to synthesise actual cotton.

@@nagualdesign There is already concern growing about cast-off polyester, nylon, etc. ending up in the environment, and taking centuries to break down. And I doubt it would be simpler to invent a fibre that mimicked cotton, or someone would have done it by now, given that cotton is more comfortable than synthetics to wear, and the popularity of denim. Starch is a more complicated polysaccharide than cellulose. Plants make cellulose for structure and starch for food, using the same raw materials. But they make a lot more cellulose than starch.

@@davidcoombs7719 I didn't say it would be simple(r), I said it would be more pragmatic to invent a fibre with the qualities of cotton than try to synthesise actual cotton.

Or as a 'food' for petri dish steaks (or real cows, I suppose.)

@@nagualdesign It may be more pragmatic, but until recently, it was more pragmatic to stay with fossil fuels than to develop sustainable energy sources.

Thank you Logan...just knew that there would be a HUGE problem...however it is a step in the right direction...but given that there are umpteen failures in land and transport systems...I feel if we put far more concerted efforts to solve these first, it would have the greatest positive impact on food production😁

Not to mention the energy and time required / environmental impact of obtaining the reactants and disposing of any chemical waste.

This seems to all be enzymatic, which means that it’s not only very selective, but can be implemented in real-time parallel, meaning that purifying steps may not actually be required. Additionally most enzymatic side products are reversible, so get regenerated to the previous step. Now whether all the conditions of the enzymes can be satisfied concurrently is an open question.

I also don't understand how easy to mass produce all of the components and steps for this process. Creating small amounts of any substance in a lab is usually way easier than mass production in a factory. What type of conditions are required for mas manufacturing? Is the required factory as expensive and as environmentally unstable as semiconductor manufacturing? What is the material component cost? How is the material gathering cost factored? This video is kind of too close to a press release to be that useful in trying to inform me about this process. It took a headline scientists make starch, and explained each component and step without any real context besides the praise of a parent to a child. I'm not even going to do my own research because looking up all the ensimes for cost examination will take too much time for something which is still lab bound.

This would make a great topic for this channel- advances in material purification processes.

One would only purify the product at the end, enzymes can work simultaneously. If you remember from chem class, enzymes are catalysts, not reactants.

Yes, I need to know what the energy return on investment will ultimately be in comparing the various starch producing technologies.

@@paulwhetstone0473 the biggest benefit of this is that the energy required can be solar panels in the desert and as long as the area of solar panels is the same as the area needed to grow crops to produce the same amount of starch it will be a step in the right direction.

If this works at scale, it will be as big a transformation of farming as artificial fertilizer was.

@@franciscoshi1968 That's exactly what I thought too. It takes the sensitivity of plants to various elements out of the equation.

@@franciscoshi1968 from the video it seems like we would only need less than a third of the area. Also, this is just the first research, if this really is promising we should see at least a couple of alternatives in the next years which will probably bring even better efficiency. An other thing to keep in mind if that we can just cover roofs in solar and have starch produced even in urbanized areas instead of using grassland.

Evolution is amazing. To think that this long chemical process could arise naturally through millions of years of random mutation and natural selection, then be adopted by every photosynthetic creature on Earth is... Really something. And the result we need bioreactors and many chemicals to obtain is produced in a little leaf that can fit in the palm of your hand.

Really, all chances.. Come on, we had a Creator. We are not from pond scum.

what about the fact that some people go hungry while others use food for packaging ? doesn't that seam obscenely backwards?

@@jacob_massengale Of course, but that has little to do with the comment you're replying to.

you didn't take into account the CO2 storage economy here.

PLA comes from starch right?

Let's hope it doesn't.

@Paulster2 You forget that throughout the tropics the 'growing season' is year round. There is no winter.

@@acmefixer1 - The Tropics are only part of the world. He's talking about "global agriculture", which is much bigger than the Tropics. You're right there's no winter in the Tropics. Even in the Tropics, there are still "growing seasons", it's just there's more of them. You have to wait for the crop to grow before you can harvest. With what is being discussed, the harvest happens all the time, not during every 12-week growing cycle.

@@Paulster2 The plant "footprint" can be much smaller with vertical production as well.

@@acmefixer1 I live in Colombia, where they have 2-3 harvests per year. Some crops can be staggered to give output all year long.

From the first few steps of the chemistry, it looks like its primary inputs are CO2 (present at low pressure in Martian atmosphere), hydrogen and water. Enzymes are catalysts and can theoretically be recycled/reused at high efficiency. Buuuuut, hydrogen and water are notoriously difficult to get off-earth. Anywhere without a magnetosphere tends to get it stripped off by the billions of years of exposure to solar wind that happened before we showed up looking for it. The gas giants and Sun are mostly kade of hydrogen, but getting it out of that gravity well is harder than shipping it from Earth, just due to the energy involved.

There will never be a colony on Mars. People should really stop fantasising about such nonsense.

@@Withnail1969 Never is an awfully long time. People used to believe humans would never fly. Then we built planes. People used to think that we'd never leave earth. Then the Apollo program put boots on the moon. Nothing in the laws of physics forbids it, which means if its in 20 years or 2000, its bound to happen eventually, as long as we don't go extinct first.

@@willb5278 Read my lips. It. Will. Never. Happen. We will have mass starvation here on Earth next year, 2022, and the electrical grid in Europe is already starting to fail. We've run out of cheap to extract resources and this will bring down our whole civilisation. We will never again be able to put anything in space. People mostly don't understand this, but it's the truth.

@@Withnail1969 I dont know where you get your certainty from, but i look forward to seeing you proved wrong.

Wow, thank you!

Might be a good idea to save our current home planet first Wanuby.😏

@@ciaransherry6021 Though getting CO2 on Mars is easy, unless there is microbial life there, then destroying the atmosphere by removing CO2 is just as bad as emitting too much of it here on Earth..

@@Tore_Lund No, removing CO2 from the Martian atmosphere is not as bad as adding it here because there is nothing living on Mars. Earth has a complex ecology living in its biosphere.

@@incognitotorpedo42 We don't know, there might be bacteria living on rocks in caves or sub terrain. Methane emissions have been measured in spring and summer from the Mars orbiter. So my point is, if we consider Martian life inferior, we are just as bad as any other aliens invading Earth for resources, because life on Earth is considered insignificant to them.

@@ciaransherry6021 True, but when you don't trust someone to even recycle, lets start thinking of plan B, C, D, E, and F

@UCgvC4RzC4YX_VN0QUDMjTrQ no? fermantation is used to make a multitude of compounds, not just farts

I’m thinking vodka lol

Cheers Stephen. Much appreciated :-)

Exactly! Huge.

Let's fix our planet first, eh?!

Why do you need starch in space? I thought the whole point was to recycle it into oxygen?

Eh, the 11-chemical-step process might take up an unsustainable amount of space. Exotic enzymes and all might be hard to manufacture in space.

@@anarchisttechsupport6644 Good points.

Why don’t you learn English.?

Dear Norman, What a jerky thing to say! This guy is Argentinaian. Do you learn Spanish when living in an English-speaking country? No, I didn't think so. ====== Dear Dave, Roberto praised the quality of your channel. He also requested you consider making Spanish-language captions so that millions of Spanish speakers might access your excellent content. I bet if you asked, there are probably people in your audience who would be willing and able to contribute to that project.

Glad it was helpful! :-)

Life is an amazing catalyst.

I agree. This is a case of Occam's razor no?

It's unclear what they have done. "Bioreactor" is all that is mentioned. I'm assuming that this is already a bacterial application.

An enormous step forward? In 1802, Humphry Davy invented the first electric light. It took another 77 years until Thomas Edison created the first commercially practical incandescent light.

@@eddydogleg Your point being?

Absolutely. Although there are some terrific lingerie adverts. I mean if you're in the need of buying some lingerie.

Not to mention a discussion of the costs.

This could be a key technology for space travel and colonizing other planets.

@@luddity Assuming you have a ready source of CO2 in space. That would not likely be the case for space travel or a moonbase, but would apply to Mars.

I suppose it depends on whether the research leads to a start-up, and if the start-up has a name, and if penny shares are available to buy on the stock market.

Don't forget the land usage for the additional solar panels. If the energy conversion rate is roughly equivalent, we'll still need about ¼ to ⅛ the land previously used for agriculture for solar panels and wind farms to produce the necessary electricity. Additionally to all the wind and solar that we need to build to decarbonize all other industrial sectors AND the ones needed to extract megatonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere to feed into this conversion process. Also, I'm pretty sceptical about any research that's been done by a purely Chinese team. I've read quite a few of them myself and a lot of them were... Well, let's call them questionable at best and unreproducible at worst. In China it's often the quantity of publications that counts and not the quality or even the reality of those papers.

It all comes down to costs in the end. I very much doubt this in anywhere near the costs for a 1ha field…

@@midnight8341 Starch can be stored, so this is also a battery for solar and wind surplus power. Guess artificial starch will also have a harvest season.

@@Tore_Lund Methanol (one of the steps in this synthesis) can also be stored or turned into ethanol, which can also be stored pretty easily, but both can be turned back to electricity waaaaay more easily and efficiently than starch ever could. So, no, this will not be used as a battery for solar and wind, because it would be hella inefficient.

Water plants may be useful in this context, but don't get too excited about the prospects for wetlands. Once humans start industrial scale production there will be no room for waterbirds, and any aquatic species will have to contend with the fertilizer that will inevitably be added to "improve" the process.

hear hear!! - why isn't the money power investing in azolla production? i get excited about the systems design in azolla production, and see the azolla as a companion to water chestnuts, and those ponds simply as filtration for 'downstream' aquaponics. Oh it is a beautiful thing. Such a system transcends its form and function to become high art.

@@AndrewBlucherAgreed, If you build a wetland to use the entire place as an Azolla farm, its value as a wetland is quite limited. I get that on an industrial scale resource extraction would need a careful balance in any context, especially wetlands. Still, there are natural wetlands and bodies of water that today must remove masses of these floating plants constantly because they become a navigation hazard. In the regions where various floating plants are so abundant they become a problem for boats, the plants are regularly either scooped out of the lake, river or canal and fed to animals, or are poisoned to remove them. In temperate regions, to keep steady floating pond plant production year round, would require greenhouses because most of these plants do not thrive in freezing temperatures, but green houses are not a new or difficult technology. The advantage of going to water plants is they have such amazing productivity for the smallest of inputs, and can double their biomass every 24 hours, while binding up carbon in that biomass. If floating plants were used as a better method of making starch, the need for endless fields of yearly crops for industrial starch production and animal feed becomes obsolete. That gives us better options on how to restore those lands, which were dotted with seasonal wetlands, and covered in deep rooted carbon sinking perennial grasses, and would be again if the pressure to make starch and animal feed was taken off terrestrial crop production, and those grasslands be restored by regenerative grazing. The biggest problem is that people keep running around looking for solutions that don't look at the system holistically. They go for high tech piecemeal attempts to tackle problems like atmospheric carbon, that are years away in development, when we have simpler solutions already at hand, and like Water Lettuce blocking navigation. We just need to look at the problem creatively and holistically to find an already available and ready to scale up solution.

@@kparker2430 I get pretty enthusiastic about Azolla too. The possibilities are so vast. Personally I grow it at home to supplement my duck and chicken feed. 🐔

Pollination for indoor farming is tricky, no depending on the cultivation.

And what area do you need to mine and destroy for thousands of years to manufacture those solar panels? Plus the batteries to back them up?

@@gekkobear1650 at least they are not burnt or just used up like fertilizer. Those minerals in this products will be recycled for sure because it is cheaper than mining

@@tarant315 lol pretty much nothing is recycled because everything entropically degrades too much. That's why we're mining more than ever. Literally no one anywhere is recycling solar panels at any scale. Nor Li+ batteries. Who are you kidding? Check out what Africom is doing in DR Congo to secure coltan for US production of batteries from slave labor. None of this "renewable energy" is clean. It's all more filthy destructive mining of the Earth's body. We need to deindustrialize and relocalize supply chains plain and simple. It'll happen whether you go willingly or not

@@gekkobear1650' Volkswagen electric car battery recycling plant' just google it And you know how to get sulphur out of oil? Also there are new battery chemistry which include LTO and Sodium Iron. If you really care, you should know how much cobalt is in your house hold

I read the primary paper. If they are using hydrogen at the first step, they aim to get it from electrolysis of water using solar power. This means means they will make O2. Very cool study.

Glad you enjoy it!

Methanol is cool, but it's quite toxic. And how are you getting that energy out of methanol? Burn it in a 30% efficient internal combustion engine? Separate hydrogen out (energy intensive) and shove it into a fuel cell (expensive)?

@@TestTest12332 We are currently not really saving energy from summer to winter, but we should. As an example the cost of electricity is in the order of 10 higher now compared to this summer (much because we recently closed 25% of our nuclear). Methanol is easy to transfer to useful energy and is a lot easier store than hydrogen. As for toxicity, I do not believe it is much worse than petrol, so that part should be manageable. Sure, the efficiency would be lousy, 20-25% or so, but to my knowledge there is no efficient way to save electricity for 6 months or more, so it is better than being relying on German or Polish brown-coal power plants.

Its not actually sequestering CO2 from the air but instead the production of starch in this manner could be a way to reduce land use and avoid those CO2 emissions associated with the normal mechanism.

@@reganovich CO2 is the primary input in the first step. Unless that CO2 comes from the air, it makes little sense as the balance of the greenhouse gas is not improved. The land use plus photosynthesis does extract the CO2 from the air, so if the replacement system doesn’t, then it will add to climate change and not be sustainable.

@@richardgoldsmith7278 ya, the initial co2 isn't from the air but from hydrogen

Glad you enjoyed it

it doesn't strictly speaking 'capture' CO2, but there are still benefits in terms of land use, no longer reliant on cyclical cycles, use for excess energy production, food security and also a path to creating additoinal food stuffs or direct CO2 capture

​@@reganovich a lot of that land area saved could be used to grow bamboo, the fastest growing plant, a natural carbon captor. Bamboo can be used for many things, food, clothes, instead of wood, paper, as "firewood", as charcoal, toilet paper, instead of plastic in many cases etc...

​@@reganovichalso harvesting starch releases CO2. Transporting artificial starch will also be shorter since it can be made closer to large cities

@6:10 "It's fun this, isn't it?" he gleefully taunts us :) No Dave, it's torture for my layman brain, as you well know!

Glad you enjoyed it! :-)

Tony seba is very much a fan on that topic

I am pretty sure a bunch of those methods are simply too slow/too low volume. I hope I am wrong, though, - could definitely use these.

@@buttonasas never, ever use that as a reason to dismiss a technology - because as soon as a market emerges, and prices are dictated by supply and demand, it's merely an engineering challenge to increase production speed and volume for a given cost, and when the best minds are on a problem like that it usually doesn't remain a problem for long.

Everything being done is the push for space exploration by the elites. They always keep that in the back of their mind. Sorta weird, they could make life on Earth so much better, but they don't. Also the elites have a negative view on people and would rather replace people with machines.

I think they will take the idea and see if they can modify/improve it and then apply for a patent.

Cheers Blake. I appreciate your feedback :-)

It'd certainly make surviving +4 degrees Celsius a hell of a lot easier. Though we'd still probably have to live underground or in domes, and it would still be a nightmare to live through.

Harnessing photosynthesis for energy production has possibilities that could change everything. Just having plants inside our homes offers a cooling effect as well as a beneficial gas exchange. I have been growing edible plants indoors for decades and converted the kitchen pantry into a greenhouse. If photosynthesis could power the LED grow lights this could be a closed system. As it is now, solar energy powers those lights.

​@@discountchocolate4577 First off, the current guess is 1.5 C not 4. But even so, a 4 C increase would make life better in many places. Increase grain production in Canada. Everyone will survive just fine, people keep their homes 22 C with their thermostat. Also most of the theoretical warming will be in winter and that is actually beneficial. But I am certain this is an emotional issue for you, but for me it is a nothing burger. The whole nebulous concept of Climate Change is being used by politicians to extract ever higher taxes and to more deeply control your life. The big risk is the Russian/COVID/CLIMATE Passport. The Russians will use it to screw with those in Europe for sure!

@@superchuck3259 Even +2 C is probably going to be enough to eventually flood low-altitude island countries and make a significant share of currently habitable tropics uninhabitable. That right there is a recipe for a global south-tor-north migrant crisis that might make the recent wave of MENA migrants into Europe seem like a trickle, once the option to move from flooded parts to non-flooded parts of the same country/continent is no longer viable. If you believe we're staying at +1.5 without everyone on Earth slamming the brakes this decade and suffering the front-end costs of dramatic changes to the global economy which make covid look small-time, I have bad news for you. In the very best case scenario where the entire world goes carbon neutral/negative tomorrow and stays that way, there's still another 40 years of warming locked in, because the observed lag between emissions and warming is that long. This implies that we're only _now_ reaping what our parents and grandparents were sowing in the *early 1980s* and we can only expect worse since emissions have grown in the meantime. Meanwhile in reality we have some of the world's biggest per-capita GHG emitters, the US and Australia among them, actively defying long-term scientific common sense in favor of short-term economic common sense, recognizing that stopping the flow of petroleum and natural gas would create an economic crisis that capitalism can't solve, with the policymakers UN's recent climate summit coming to similar conclusions, if not just taking the coward's way out by kicking the can down the road...again. In my view the IPCC's second-worst forecasted scenario of five, where emission reduction and mitigation efforts are mostly downplayed in favor of climate apartheid (see the aforementioned potential for a climate migrant crisis), the same one where we overshoot +3 C and potentially approach +7 C, is currently the most likely one. On an additional note: even if the Arctic doesn't go fully blue within the next few years, going past that tipping point is all but inevitable, absent dramatic decarbonization efforts that should have started 20 years ago. The notion that "warmer winters" are going to do us any good in a context where the northern ice cap keeps losing ice from year to year after adjusting for seasonal difference, and when the northern taigas/tundras are currently too barren to compensate for the loss of tropical agricultural land, sounds almost like willful ignorance. If you like eating chocolate, dates, bananas, coconuts, coffee, pineapples, etc., then you'll hate living in a world with at least +3 C warming because the lush tropical climates supporting those crops are going away under those conditions, and the only way you'll get these treats is if they're grown in greenhouses like in _Children of Men,_ and in that case they'll be luxury goods for the same rich people you fear are going to try to control you via covid passports.

@@discountchocolate4577 Yep, I do fear being controlled. A small change in climate doesn't concern me, I can easily adjust. I am tough. I know the controllers have evil nefarious intents. Not for your good or mine. Russian/CONVID/CLIMATE/GREEN PASSPORTS are being pressed with all the might the elites can muster. Okay, I see you made up your mind about climate change. But say a series of volcanic eruptions happen. Ash gets into the Stratosphere. Climate can change cooler too. At least for a short time, right? Say it has a cooling effect of 3 degrees C from our current temperatures. What is the impact of that? Sure it only lasts 2-3 years. But will crops fail? Will life get harder? Maybe you need to study both sides here! Where is bigger risks? Cooler or warmer?

If it avoids pesticide and fertiliser use it’s a win for the environment and a huge problem for the agrochemical business

@@randall9282 Good point, and in time Fusion. Thorium reactors offer the added benefit of 'burning through' the isotopes - instead of hiding them, and then pretending this won't cause problems since we no longer see them today. On the other hand, no need to wait, as solar and wind will work fine. We can generate solar and wind power in deserts, offshore, or in other areas not conducive to crop growth. Wind turbines don't generally reduce crop growth as farmers have shown. Also, many crops will grow under solar panels.

Look up Duke Energy Solar power. 74.9MW solar plants will take up about 650 acres of land. Does that seem like a lot of land to you? Replacing crops with panels is sorta like industrializing away life. Almost like the evil players hate living things. The evil might say, well you kill plants to eat them? Most of the time nope. We eat seeds/fruits. Well, you plant a seed, it sprouts, grows, fertilizes the seed, and grows the seed and then the plant dies. It is a natural cycle.

Thanks for the reference.

This was my thought also

You can make methanol from CO2 and Green Hydrogen

It might be better to not use corn at all but a different plant.

@@catprog true. This actually crossed my mind last night, but having zero knowledge of plant biology, I haven't a clue what such a plant might be.

"... why cost is the most important criterion". Because if it's not affordable no one is going to use it. Look at the production of petroleum. We didn't stop killing cetaceans in 1860 out any concern for the animals but because first commercial oil well start production.

The planet will live on, regardless. Maybe without whales (or humans) I'm not sure why we seem to need much starch. Proteins, fats, sugars... but we don't need carbs to survive. They're just a cheap source of calories. Cost is not the issue but efficiency is. If something is needed it makes sense not to waste energy getting it. If that thing is a CO² reduction maybe we would be better off capturing it as something else?

@@jimurrata6785 Carbs, sugar, starch are all carbon hydrates. You do eat potatoes, rice, bread or pasta? Don't tell me you are on the freak Atkinson diet, that more than triples your annual CO2 emissions from what you eat. A man needs 60g protein daily and a woman 40g, if they don't exercise, that is 180g and 120g animal products daily, if you not on a vegetarian diet and substitute some of it with plant protein, roughly 1/5 of your daily calorie intake should come from fat and protein, no more.

@@jimurrata6785 *capturing it as something else* Yep, we should use every method possible to reduce CO2 and optimize later. *waste energy* is part of my argument - it is not a waste if we have prevented a catastrophe. FWIW, millions of people depend on rice (starch) as primary food source.

@@eddydogleg *commercial oil well production* look how that's turned out; no unintended side effects eh ?

I don't think so. While the title is a bit stupid, producing starch in a factory is actually quite good. Specially if we get it a bit more efficient. You can also use the starch as a food source for other systems. The biggest problem is getting the energy in the first place and plants are very inefficient in absorbing sunlight compared to modern solar panels. Hydroponics also require energy input which ultimately comes from the sun. If you can replace most of that with solar panels you can reduce your space requirements drastically.

You’re discussing production of protein. How does that address the problem of using land for starch production? It doesn’t, whatever the other merits of aquaculture may be.

Aquaponics could combine quite well with this technology, since it is mostly good for growing green vegetables and fish protein, rather than bulk carbohydrates.

Solar heat panels and molten salt storage can provide a huge amount of process heat as well, bypassing the need to create heat using solar-electric methods.

A purely chemical starch process could be very useful in space travel. Launching and storing WATER ice and DRY ice (CO2) and then making methane (and starch) could form the basis for growing spaceships? And other useful plastics.

I think it's through the water-to-H2 jump. People have made fuel from H2 and CO2, and my impression it's basically catalysts, temp, and pressure, not eletrolysis or anything. You probably need heaters for it, and pumps, and you lose some hydrogen to water in the process. I think that's kind of it as far as energy input.

@@PlaynBass That's a cool idea. And both water and carbon dioxide could, of course, be potentially mined on Mars.

@@Jazu64 Yes, the making of methane is only the first step in the process. Now think how much DRY ICE can be shipped into space. This can help to remove atmospheric CO2 from our CO2 cycle here on Earth, & CO2 may end up being an export to Space Habitation, and Planetary missions. We could be a garden planet, with our factories either non-polluting, or in space.

Throw in quantum superposition as well!

Totally agree

The over-consumption problem is mostly a myth, it self corrects. We will always consume or waste as much as is available and no more. As for your assertion that economics dictate whether we consume more than we need, you are partially correct. The only reason we have societies on the planet right now that are able to over consume is the availability of cheap labor in developing nations. Once the wealth gap closes (by continued development of the poor countries), the cost of the goods being over-consumed become too expensive to waste anymore. So while it is not a good thing to waste material, its a temporary problem. That said, consumerism doesn't make you happy and prudent people in wealthy nations shouldn't wait till its too expensive to cut it out of their lives.

@@lexpox329 The wealth gap between developing and developed countries isn't likely to close anytime soon. The US as a matter of foreign policy goes out of its way to keep relatively poor countries poor, with the backing of international institutions like the World Bank, IMF, etc., whose only unambiguous third world success story, China, is in active _spite_ of their usual neoliberal policy prescriptions, and now they're offering an alternative to the rest of the former third world. Jury's still out on whether Belt and Road makes true economic convergence possible, given there's nothing stopping the PRC from just offering slightly better deals than the IMF.

@@discountchocolate4577 What's the evidence that the US "goes out of its way" to keep poor countries poor? That sounds a bit tinfoil-ish, imho. What possible advantage would that confer on the US? It's unclear whether Belt and Road is intended to drive economic convergence or to increase the power of the PRC. My money is on the latter.

@@incognitotorpedo42 There is a lot of ground to cover to adequately answer your questions. Where do I begin? Let's start with your take on the PRC's motives behind Belt and Road, which is to increase its own power (the implication being, relative to rivals including the US, EU, and Russia) rather than primarily to provide aid to other poorer countries. Keeping poor countries poor allows richer countries, whether we're talking about the US or PRC, to set the terms of trade on behalf of corporate interests. A steady supply of poor workers means cheap labor that "first-world" capitalists can use to break unions and suppress wages domestically. Poorer countries also have a much harder time with natural disaster mitigation, and often find themselves incapable of mounting successful military defense from invasions by the US and its allies (or from the PRC, hypothetically). A country rendered unable to build itself up, reduced to begging for whatever aid NGOs are willing to hand out, is one less threat to the continued rule of the major world powers and their corporate rulers. PRC was the only third world nation to escape this trap and now they're the biggest threat to the US. Think for a second about the fact that Americans take tropical foods like coffee, bananas, pineapples, cacao, and coconuts for granted. Or about the fact that several countries suffer the "natural resource curse", wherein their governments are often autocratic and have extremely specialized economies revolving around mining rare minerals (cobalt, lithium, etc.) or drilling oil, all needed for the consumer goods we also tend to take for granted in western countries. This sort of arrangement wasn't an accident, it was _designed_ this way by corporations and corporate-friendly governments. Most of the countries which are net exporters of tropical cash crops and rare natural resources are poor and the farms which produce them are often owned by western corporations. Consider for a moment, just one example, that two giant food corporations, Nestle and Cargil, which both include _slave labor_ in their chocolate supply chains, just this year had a US Supreme Court case thrown out on a jurisdiction technicality. This is economic imperialism, the sort that the US has engaged in for the past 70ish years, since the formation of the Bretton Woods system, IMF, and World Bank in the 1940s. These institutions were at the forefront of imposing policies on then-third world countries as conditions for loans to their governments, essentially forcing many countries just starting to emerge from literal colonial rule during midcentury (especially in Africa) to submit to the whims of European and American capitalists in a less obvious way. The terms of trade were such that these countries would receive aid for development only if they were to permit western corporations to develop plants, farms, factories, etc. and reap most of the profits instead of being allowed to develop their own "infant industries", the very strategy most developed countries used to gain that lopsided bargaining power to begin with. By the 1970s, policy prescriptions also started forcing these poor states to privatize tax-funded public services and programs and pursue market-based solutions, with the CIA-backed coup in Chile ushering in the beginning of the neoliberal epoch literally at gunpoint. Needless to say this sort of violent enforcement of unfair terms of trade have been the norm, and I will reiterate that China, whose government had already successfully exiled their old liberal government to Taiwan in the 1950s, has had the means (large national military, not to mention nukes) to resist the sort of western imperialist economic sabotage (see e.g. North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela) and open military violence (Chile, Nicaragua, Colombia, Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, ... this list goes on and likely includes most of the former third world) that crushed other poor countries' efforts to improve domestic living standards on their own terms.

They are proper tongue twisters, that's for sure!! :-)

Smart people hardly have children

This is a critical point that has been left out of the video - unless the process is simply to pump air into the reactor and let the process itself take the CO2 out, this will not help atmospheric CO2 levels the same way as photosynthesis does.

The good news is that direct CO2 capture is a growing industry with a growing need for places to put the CO2.

Carbon capture from fuel burning power plants - natural gas initially, eventually fuel synthesized using excess solar or wind power and used in the fairly rare cases where battery storage runs out, avoiding wasting energy massively over-building batteries to handle those rare weeks of darkness due to long bouts of bad weather. Burn a bit of wood with CC to add carbon to the system, since humans would ultimately breath out the carbon that was mostly being recirculated multiple times through the "emergency power" system.

Its not just STEM subjects You also need to be able to discern which sources to believe History teaches that type of critical logical evaluation Humanities are in HUGE decline as no longer considered important

If you offer free education you devalue the entire value of the degree attained. You talk about higher education but you desperately need to take a course in economics especially one focusing on Micro Economics. Currently in the USA, in order to have more degrees in different fields the information being taught is being watered down and dumbed down to increase the over all number of individuals who can pass the class and acquire that degree. A study done just recently has shown empirically while more degrees are being granted overall the amount of real knowledge these students are retaining and learning is at the lowest levels in decades, making the latest graduates the stupidest crop in history at least in the USA. The traits needed to succeed in any field on this earth are scarce but the sheer diversity of traits complement a wide variety of skills and outcomes. Graduating greater number doctors only waters down the average proficiency of the average doctor leaving the medical field with poorly equipped doctors and a decreased rate of true healthcare that is useful to the end user. Plus the worlds need for people proficient in Fast Food and customer service is greater than the need for technological breakthroughs that are in many times discovered through the process of serendipity or brute force methods that try every available combination to look for the needed breakthrough. To think that anyone can do the simplest job well is being naive to the max and more education is not the answer either as now you have many more incompetent people who think they are much smarter than they are which only creates a paradox of greater disillusionment and entitlement for something these individuals are not actually equipped to handle proficiently.

@@anthonycarbone3826 increasing access does not equate devaluing degrees Nor does one need to attain a degree to have better education secondary/higher schools and primary schools is where i got MY education. It is only because i have a strong love of learning and WAS capable of more that ive gained the understanding that i have. specialisation also has its drawbacks Because of specialisation, archaeologists disagree with geologists about the age of the cairo pyramid complex Because of specialisation, climate catastrophe and 6th mass extinction are not given the same traction and treated like two seperate subjects Because of specialisation, Medical professionals in different fields have no knowledge outside their area of expertise n thus cannot identify best course of action, information such as safeguarding slips through the holes in the net and abuses happen that should not happen. YES education at large has declined in america and uk, but thats more to do with the curriculum and the stupid time-wasting of teachers large classes and constant testing putting added stress onto the students The nordic countries are among the best re education outcomes and they have greater access to higher education, i think you'll find it IS free over there, it is a MERIT based system. While in uk and usa, money talks louder and the worship/veneration of money, a human symbolic construct, is laughable and earth destroying. The rest is simply your own opinion and biases Fast food etc is being automated and yes it Is possible to do a simple job well -those are the easiest jobs to do well -.- which is why you will often find those with learning difficulties doing such jobs Education is how you get rid of incompetence, incl self-knowledge of strengths and weaknesses the problem u identify i would argue has more to do with 'make-shift busy' middle-management jobs n those were created to keep the populace too busy to watch what the gov and corporations get up to thats against our interests

@@kimwarburton8490 Basic Economics teaches and proves that increasing supply of any product lowers the price of that product. If the supply of any degree increases past its equilibrium point than the market will lower the price paid for that degree. On the flip side guaranteeing free higher education increases demand and increases the price of that two or four year degree which translates more costs for colleges and universities pushing salaries of college teaches and professors upwards. Paying higher salaries and colleges having more costs does nothing to increase the quality of that teaching as once again the average college professor expertise and ability to teach goes down. So you have higher absolute costs to attain the degree and lower salaries for those who do attain the salary which is not a winning solution when other needs go unmet. Remember just because the two or four year degree is free to the student does not mean there is not a cost involved which means others will have to pay the cost without society or the economy gaining any economic increases. Price is the signal in the market place that allows demand to equal supply and create a equilibrium where there is an economic surplus. Free higher education is a drain on the economy. Now education is not based solely upon going to college as life is an education all by itself and only those who strive to excel are able to share the rewards reached with others and themselves. Free is equal zero cost and only requires 0 effort which once creates no economic surplus but only a deficit.

@@anthonycarbone3826 not ONE of us ever mentioned FREE education SHOULD be rolled out, i used nordic countries as a real world example of how you are totally wrong there they have free tertiary education, they havent dumbed down and they arent in a worse situation than uk or usa you must be american and scared of anything that sounds akin to socialism, instead of seeing that you should get something tangible in return for ur taxes beyond wars for profit education is NOT a commodity, but a human right^

People need to stop having cultures making ruminants sacred like in Africa used for wealth or somewhere across the world. We should also close local fast food businesses selling meat.. And burn down the consumerist Macdonalds and Kentucky French Chicken. The global average is 2.867 tons CO2 emitted per ton NH3 produced over the world. Sometimes it's produced by coal gasification and other times steam reforming by the Haber bosch process. In the end shell, BP and Exxon still live on our backs. I think ammonia accounts for 1-2% of GHG's because it's the 2nd most produced molecule but it helps any sectors to function related to petrol. Producing NH3 otherwise uses loads of electricity in electrolysis and extracting nitrogen out of the air. Nonetheless cow populations decreased in western society, we can live without bakeries and cheese too, right ? But yeah, we should ditch algae food additives and genetic selection for cattle to emit significantly less natural grass fed CH4 from cow burps. As well as manure management and we shouldn't create methane thanks to biodigestors for cooking, while not abusing induction stoves requiring the national grid to function, it stinks for farmers right ? People nutrition diets don't matter but labgrown meat works perfectly. Cough cough, sarcasm, I think my neighboring country such as yours, make holes in cows stomachs for plenty of reasons and chocolate pollutes alot compared to other agricultural sectors. Solve that first. We can totally live without chocolate (& and other foods) unlike the carbon cycle... Or eat less in general. Your ideas aren't yours, greenwashing food doesn't work. Do well.

It's my pleasure