logo
episode-header-image
Aug 2019
14m 6s

A new way to remove CO2 from the atmosph...

TED
About this episode

Our planet has a carbon problem -- if we don't start removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, we'll grow hotter, faster. Chemical engineer Jennifer Wilcox previews some amazing technology to scrub carbon from the air, using chemical reactions that capture and reuse CO2 in much the same way trees do ... but at a vast scale. This detailed talk reviews both the promise and the pitfalls.

Learn more about our flagship conference happening this April at attend.ted.com/podcast

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Up next
Yesterday
What you discover when you really listen | Hrishikesh Hirway (re-release and interview)
“Every conversation has the potential to open up and reveal all the layers and layers within it, all those rooms within rooms," says musician and host of the beloved podcast Song Exploder, Hrishikesh Hirway. In this profoundly moving talk from 2022, he offers a guide to deep conv ... Show More
50m 20s
Apr 24
What Kosovo can teach the world about freedom | Vjosa Osmani Sadriu
“Truth is the real oxygen for democracy,” says Vjosa Osmani Sadriu, the 6th President of the Republic of Kosovo. As a child of war, she once longed for someone to save her people. Now she’s been in the rooms where decisions are made — and she’s never forgotten what brought her th ... Show More
19m 41s
Apr 23
Beware the power of prediction | Carissa Véliz
What do the story of Oedipus and your insurance premiums have in common? They are both driven by self-fulfilling prophecies. Philosopher and TED Fellow Carissa Véliz traces the hidden power of prediction, from Roman emperors who banned prophets to the AI algorithms quietly making ... Show More
14m 35s
Recommended Episodes
Apr 2024
Capturing CO2 from the air
We're in Iceland, where, in attempt to fight climate change, huge machines are being used to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.And then locking it away deep underground, turning it into stone.The business behind the technology believes this is a crucial step in reducing t ... Show More
17m 29s
May 2023
Meet the massive machines removing carbon from Earth's atmosphere | Jan Wurzbacher
To prevent global warming, we need to drastically reduce pollution. After that, we need to trap as much excess carbon dioxide from the air as possible. Enter Orca, the world's first large-scale direct air capture and storage plant, built in Iceland by the team at Climeworks, led ... Show More
14m 1s
Jan 2022
BrainStuff Classics: How Close Are We to Recycling Carbon Dioxide Emissions?
Carbon dioxide is a waste product of gasoline- and coal-burning engines, and it's a serious pollutant. But what if we could capture that carbon and recycle it into usable fuel? Learn more in this classic episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks. ... Show More
4m 25s
Nov 2021
Geoengineering The Planet
Even with the best efforts, it will be decades before we see any change in global temperatures through our mitigation efforts. Given the pace of global heating and the time lag before our emissions reductions have any impact, scientists are exploring additional ways of reducing g ... Show More
27m 23s
Apr 2021
Sucking the carbon out of the sky
Most of our efforts to fight climate change, from electric cars to wind turbines, are about pumping fewer greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But what if we could pull out the gases that are already there? Akshat Rathi, a reporter at Bloomberg with a doctorate in chemistry, kno ... Show More
43m 52s
Feb 2022
TED Climate: Woolly pigs, high tech and other ingenious ways to take carbon out of the air | Gabrielle Walker
What do woolly pigs have to do with climate change? They're part of a vital, ingenious and evolving strategy to take carbon out of the sky and store it safely -- in trees, soils, the ocean, buildings, rocks and deep underground. Every carbon removal approach takes some combinatio ... Show More
12m 3s
Jun 2023
Scrubbing Carbon from the Air
Dan Friedmann is the CEO of Carbon Engineering. The company is at the frontier of a new industry, direct air capture. They just broke ground on a big plant in Texas that will pull carbon dioxide out of the air. Dan’s problem is this: how do you bring the price of direct air captu ... Show More
25m 49s
Apr 2019
Corinne Le Quéré on carbon and climate
Professor Corinne Le Quéré of University of East Anglia talks to Jim Al-Khalili about tracing global carbon. Throughout the history of planet Earth, the element carbon has cycled between the atmosphere, the oceans and the biosphere. This natural cycle has maintained the amount of ... Show More
26m 27s
Listen to millions of songs and podcasts on Anghami