I loved the city's visualization. can't wait for the upcoming "rural strategies for climate change mitigation" with like, miniature cows and crops and stuff.
He did a nebula video recently where he showed off furnishing his new studio. He built a large table in it partly for making videos but also for playing Warhammer.
Loved the visuals for this one, and the effective bait-and-switch. I'll admit, it's always nice to have hope that there's a single-step solution to all of this, stuff that's easy to implement without much inconvenience. But we can't ignore the truth that reducing our CO2 emissions is gonna take more than greenery and speculative science. I do like biochar, though. I hope some places find ways to produce it sustainably and with soil health in mind; it seems like a win-win in multiple sectors.
@@pancake5830 Depends on where you are on the planet, but yeah. It's fairly common in places closer to the equator where winter temps are much milder and heating is less necessary, and in the higher latitudes where you need the heating, a white roof is of course less effective, though doesn't need to be as effective, so it's definitely not a one-size-fits-all thing,
@pancake5830 I'm pretty certain like half of the south disagreed with you lmao. It is much more expensive to cool from 100f down to 75 during the summer than it is to heat from like 50f up to 75 during the winter. There is the same temp difference but considering things inside your house make heat and the sun is shining on your house, it's worse to cool. So anywhere even more hot on average/in the colder months would see even more advantage to a white instead of black roof. Also, add natural gas and assume we care about expense not Co2, and suddenly it costs the same to heat and cool a home even where I live in Michigan where it gets down to -5f and up to only 95f.
Another cool addition would be changing road design (protected bike lanes and dedicated infrastructure), density to reduce travel distance to basic necessities, and implementation of zero emissions public transit such as light rail
On the white roofs, I'm wondering if you've seen NightHawkInLight's attempts to make light-reflecting paint that's specifically designed to radiate solar energy back into space? His attempts so far aren't the most practical for actual application yet (specifically, the formula is very difficult to actually paint across a large surface), but the samples that he produced (with recipe shared in the video) did seem to genuinely work to produce a cooling effect over and above generic white paints. Thought you'd find it interesting if you're not already following!
The problem with adding greenery to cities that nobody talks about is that the small patches of grass and shrubs tend to die off pretty quickly in urban environments. It's neat to look at a wall with plants on it, or a small patch of plants in a parking lot, but those plants are going to die very quickly and will need to be replaced pretty regularly. Larger plants can live for longer, but trees have roots that will burrow down into pipes and around electrical conduit, and grow underneath streets and sidewalks, damaging all of them.
A general overview of everything I have learned about climate change over the last 15 years is very simple: Energy is everything. Capturing carbon can be done with things like biochar, but it is relatively small compared to our current emissions, and is therefore almost pointles when it comes to the climate if we do not stop putting that carbon out into the atmosphere in the first place. Solve the energy problem and everything else follows. And if you have surplus clean energy, you can use it do a lot of other environmentally friendly things, or even use it for direct carbon capture. However, all the other "green" things like more vegetation, healthier soil, cities designed to be more walkable etc. are useful for other reasons, such as making our cities simply much nicer places to live. I think many people confuse "environmentally friendly" with "cutting CO2 emissions". For example, plastic pollution is often discussed when talking about climate change, but the issues aren't that closely connected. It does help the climate a bit if less plastic is used, but that is a very minor part of the emissions problem. The Pacific garbage patch isn't relevant to climate change. (Or is it? Maybe Simon could do a video about this.)
> The Pacific garbage patch isn't relevant to climate change. (Or is it? Maybe Simon could do a video about this.) You're right, it's not particularly relevant. It'll have _some_ effect as it affects the albedo slightly, but the density of garbage in the garbage patch is quite low - a few items per square meter or less. It's not exactly the floating landfill we tend to visualize when we hear "garbage patch". The big problem with the garbage patch (and marine pollution in general) is the effect it has on local ecosystems - killing off some species while promoting the growth of others. As with everything we do, nature will eventually find a new equilibrium, but "eventually" could be centuries, millennia or even longer depending on how much damage is done. In the meantime us humans with much-shorter-than-that lifespans are stuck changing our way of life to compensate for any of the more immediate problems it creates such as species extinction. Marine pollution is absolutely a problem, but its not anywhere near as big a problem as climate change with respect to the future of our planet and the things living on it (including ourselves). From my experience, there seems to be a sizeable overlap between the group of people who want us to stop using plastic straws and grocery bags, and those who want to distract us from climate change via "individual action" and "personal responsibility" rhetoric. It's not a perfect overlap, but it's large enough to be questioned.
@@miguel5785 I know, I'm just saying that it is connected to CO2 emissions right now. And like with everything else - if it is not cheaper or significantly more convinient it won't change.
like the carbon sinking ideas but would definitely add public transport (electric trolly, light rail, underground subway, etc) Also make it more foot and bike friendly Get rid of ugly useless parking lots unless you want to keep them empty for skaters.
I loved the use of a model for this presentation. The content falls short and stops to early in the process. Cities need to be reshaped for walking and human powered bicycles. Model adding biking and walking infrastructure to eliminate cars. Railways and trans between cities and distant neighbors can also be modeled. This will cut carbon substantially. Model mixed use City with stores, manufacturing, schools and housing mixed in each small block or neighborhood. Cutting carbon for shipping products. Put in canals and waterways for large containers and carbon sink using canal green strips. Produce all vegetable food locally organically and ban meat consumption. Model local food production, processing, storage. In other words do a Part 2 that makes real changes rather than putting a green bandage on a broken system. Thanks for your work.
Fantastic video! From talking into a camera in the only free corner of the house to making an entire video illustrated by a detailed diorama, I love the transformation this channel is going through and that I am able to help even a tiny bit with this project.
@@louishennick6883 Go clear down a forest to implement the city Idea you have planned. The only green city is one never made. Man is a plague to nature, and always has been since the inception of civilization. We are an invasive species everywhere, have destroyed practically every habitat there was, whipping predators off the face of the earth because they ate our livestock, thinning down herd of while animals from millions to thousands, purging forests and fields for farms and cities.
Yeah also needs a little more density to reduce travel times and by extention overreliance on cars. Oh and energy efficiency and electrification of the buildings is a big one as well.
I really wish climate scientists would talk about algae as an alternative to direct air carbon capture, there's already testbed algae farms out there using solar power and sea water to create massive amounts of algae which can then be turned into endless products including fertilizer or even just straight burying it for locking its carbon away. JustHaveAThink did a video on this a few years ago and I wish it got more attention, because it's infinitely more viable than DAC ever could be.
1:05 Wait, really? I'm curious how that stat was arrived at cause I was always told cities are more carbon efficient than rural or suburban living due to lower land use and transportation emissions.
It's usually a misattribution of emissions. The emissions of rural areas mostly exist to support cities, but get counted as "rural". It makes the emissions per person look bad because most of the people it supports aren't counted. The worst of both worlds is the suburban sprawl, which may be what you're thinking of. Weirdly, the opportunities for low carbon living are probably greatest in that sprawl which is currently worst. If the private monopolies of the electricity grid can be broken, or regulated, then the opportunity for near zero carbon energy production is huge. Nearly all the cost of installing solar (in most countries) is permitting. A process that literally takes the network 2 minutes, but which they will happily charge tens of thousands for and introduce months of delay, and then only permit sizes far smaller than the network can actually handle. If that cost is eliminated people will install solar themselves, and in quantities that make suburbs zero carbon energy producers.
@@clf400 Well, it is per person, because if the 70% of emissions and 50% of people statements he said is true, then that's more emissions per person. If 50% of people are producing 70% of emissions, then those people are producing more emissions per person than the 50% people producing the remaining 30% of emissions.
A very captivating video and wonderful execution! I am glad to see you exploring new ways of visualising topics in the new studio. Keep up the good work!
The channel @edenicity explores what a sustainable city would look like. Hint, creating walkable and bikeable cities without cars is the key that unlocks an amazingly better quality of life.
thanks for the great video! really fun visualization of the different effects :D It would be so interesting how we could rebuild our city from a blank slate, but yeah we need to keep working within the bounds of the existing structures and improve from there.
I don't usually comment much on UA-cam, as things I watch are often different from what content I produce anyways, but I've stumbled upon your channel a couple weeks ago and have been finding the videos very insightful... But this one particularly was just incredible. So figured I'd take the extra step to share my appreciation, thank you for the amazing video!
8:46 Not sure how viable it is but I like the idea of having greenhouses on the roofs of these buildings (especially residential ones) that the CO2 pumps into. You could plant crops that thrive in high CO2 enviroments and potentially provide a source of food security for local communities.
afaik plants that fix carbon the fastest for the least amount of water are C4 photosynthesis plants (CAM photosynthesis is actually even more efficient, but its mostly cactuses and they really don't grow that fast), mostly grasses. Sugar cane, cereals like maize and wheat, and rice are all really powerful carbon sinks, which is why we make fuel out of them. Caveat: some of the modern day crops are selected to yield a LOT of grains per harvest, and require a fuckton of water to grow, so maybe investment in older, less inbred crops (heirloom corn, for example) could be a lot more beneficial.
@@zesky6654 As an argument for what? I mean, I think community gardens are a good thing - for many reasons - and we should have more of them anyway, even if they're not major food producers. That they would exist in the vicinity of higher CO2 is somewhat incidental to my desire that they would exist at all.
Beautiful way to put a paper into concrete (ah!) meaning. The relative importance of the solution it present, now and in the future, compared to the we-know-we-need-to-but-would-rather-not, emission reduction side of things, really puts things into perspective. Well done.
I notice how there is no mention of getting rid of cars, for intracity travel, thus forcing more walkable areas and public transit which will cut down on carbon emissions as well as lots of many things
Good to see transit briefly shown. Even a diesel bus is several orders of magnitude less carbon than if all the riders drove cars; trains are even better. While electrifying them would help a bit, their real reductions are in their capacity, so don't throw out your bus system just because they're not electric.
Two things stand out to me after watching this: 1. you showed a lot of plant life on the sides of tall buildings. I vaguely recall the urban planning and train enthusiast youtuber Adam Something pointing out the dangers of doing so both in terms of weight-load on the building and in terms of caring for the plants in a way that doesn't risk harming nearby humans. 2. the line "some more secular than others" seems like it's irrelevant to the video. I'm not sure why you included that.
The term you're looking for is greenwashing. "Look how eco this single, car only accessible store, with a large parking lot is - it has a white/green roof ! Of course you can freely pollute, we will just capture it back, no biggie"
@@randoguy7488 Did you reply to the wrong comment? I didn't describe anything that matches your definition of greenwashing and the rest of your comment basically just summarized one of the later points in the video, after the points I was referring to.
This was a wonderful and hopeful video. Alongside the other necessary changes, it paints a nice view of a potential future. I hope you also stomped some space marines across that city of optimistic future people.
9:00 I was dreading an EV charging station... but I shouldn't've been, your urbanism videos have all been great! P.S. the production quality and originality of this was amazing and I loved it
Some focus on designing buildings to use as little energy as possible through vernacular design (wind towers, water cooling and shaded windows in hot countries and natural insulation and sun capture in colder climates) would have been interesting since its a big part of how we might reduce our emissions
This was a sh!t ton of work, I’m sure, and I don’t have the expectation that this will be the need style of the channel BUT I will love every upcoming video in this style
1:39 Addendum: there are studies that show a potential negative effect of adding green to a place. At least, indiscriminate reforestation, that is. Leaves DO provide shade, but in some places the amount of sun cam actually warm up a place if cooling through transpiration is limited. This is particularly true to plants that retain more water, like ones from drier climates. Also, not all tropical, subtropical and temperate climates are made equal. Fine study of the local native vegetation is most needed, something that costs a lot upfront to do, so some cities won't be able to implement it. At least most of those cities are also not contributing much.
You should look into hempcrete as a building material. It isn't structural, but when combined with timber and carbon sequestering cement (depending on the building type), a lot of carbon can be sequestered quickly (hemp grows atleast 2x faster than trees and can be grown in a crop rotation on agricultural land). This could also be used as a byproduct of hemp production (which can be used for food and fibre and many many materials), and it can sequester carbon in soil with their roots and require far less water and fertiliser than crops like cotton (and can even bioaccumulate some heavy metals in soils). Other huge benefits include preferable thermal qualities (high insulation and thermal mass), ease of construction (useful for places where there is a high demand for new builings but a shortage of construction workers), air quality (no VOCs from petrochemical building materials), passive humidity regulation (this can prevent mold forming), and fire resistance (This could be especially important for cities and places that are at risk of wild fires). Not to mention the sound insulation properties which make these well suited for apartments which are far more energy efficient than houses by default. When I found out about this material I was shocked that more people don't know about it, so if you could possibly make a video on it or even just mention it I think that would help a lot for the awareness of this great material. Maybe in a video about hemp in general as an ecofriendly alternative to other crops/materials?
love the video!!, although i wish bike lanes where added, it would be cool to see as its better for people and environment and its an even better substitute for cars!
I think it's important to emphasise that green spaces should be made up from locally native plants. You can not effectively restore biodiversity with exotic plants. Planting exotics in my view, further disconnects people from nature.
This is such a cool little city visualization! Though I'd like to see a version of this that's changing transport modes, especially in game form. If anyone knows of a game that lets you build cities freely (not constrained to car centric modes like city skylines but more in depth than townscaper) let me know!
Indoor air capture is (though like you said, pretty limited) actually clever, and I hadn’t heard of that before. One of the problems with carbon capture (including direct air capture) is concentration - though CO2 ppm is high for the climate, in the world of chemical separations it’s agonizingly small. Thats why it’s more cost efficient to slap CC on a CO2 rich process stream than on a flue and much more than outdoor air. But using our respiration as a “free” concentrating step is clever. In a world where our buildings are sealed so tight that we need to deliberately bring in fresh air to lower CO2 levels, well, it sorta makes sense to use the “CO2-enriched” stream instead of putting that DAC machine outside.
Another huge way to heavily reduce co2 is utilizing permaculture, and all our advances in agriculture such as greenhouses, while reducing the heavy logistic co2 emissions caused by shipping food. And this is all done by first removing laws that prevent farming or even small gardening/community gardening and then allowing/teaching people to garden using permaculture principles and methods. There are plenty of benefits to this along with reducing co2, the biggest being decreasing or even eliminating food shortages, and reducing plastic waste that come with shipping if any.
Mind you, we could keep our rooves red but still give them the ability to reflect a ton of light by simply having a special kind of paint that reflects most of the infrared and UV just as well as it does the red color spectrum, while only absorbing the rest of the tiny visible spectrum.
Cooling paint and passive cooling seem like such an easy win. Although maybe in practice it doesn't stay white in a grimy city still burning fuel. And the environmental impacts could be complicated, like what if it is brighter then the moon at night and disturbs animals.
This was such a cool way to visualize the subject Simon!
You guys should do a in universe crossover
Soviet Microdistrict Vs USA suburbia
If Real engineering is here, then I clicked on the right video.
The new studio seems to be paying off,
This has been really fun to watch
This is one of the best videos you've ever made
Chippygaming?!?!?!?
no way
hello mister terraria
Woah unexpected
I loved the city's visualization. can't wait for the upcoming "rural strategies for climate change mitigation" with like, miniature cows and crops and stuff.
cow burps/fart release methane, a potent greenhouse gas, so in a zero carbon strategy, they need a lot of offsetting
no cows should really be the goal
@@szaszm_diets heavy in corn are major cause of this, a diet supplemented by seaweed instead can half methane emissions
Permaculture is the path for rural redesign monoculture cash crops are ruining the land
For me it would be add busses after 7:30 so I could leave in the evenings without a 4 mile walk back through the woods.
You should absolutely try warhammer with this level of skill in modelling
the bit he added in 7:34 looks a bit sus like something is going on already
He's got a really cool Hawaiian Surfer Ork army.
He did a nebula video recently where he showed off furnishing his new studio. He built a large table in it partly for making videos but also for playing Warhammer.
Think his favourite books are Gaunts Ghosts so he's already one of us
Simon has a second channel all about painting Warhammer
Loved the visuals for this one, and the effective bait-and-switch. I'll admit, it's always nice to have hope that there's a single-step solution to all of this, stuff that's easy to implement without much inconvenience. But we can't ignore the truth that reducing our CO2 emissions is gonna take more than greenery and speculative science.
I do like biochar, though. I hope some places find ways to produce it sustainably and with soil health in mind; it seems like a win-win in multiple sectors.
Another benefit of white roofs is lowering the energy used for cooling homes in the summer, so a positive all around.
more heating in the winter so probably cancels out
@@pancake5830 Depends on where you are on the planet, but yeah. It's fairly common in places closer to the equator where winter temps are much milder and heating is less necessary, and in the higher latitudes where you need the heating, a white roof is of course less effective, though doesn't need to be as effective, so it's definitely not a one-size-fits-all thing,
But it's so ugly
@pancake5830 I'm pretty certain like half of the south disagreed with you lmao. It is much more expensive to cool from 100f down to 75 during the summer than it is to heat from like 50f up to 75 during the winter.
There is the same temp difference but considering things inside your house make heat and the sun is shining on your house, it's worse to cool.
So anywhere even more hot on average/in the colder months would see even more advantage to a white instead of black roof.
Also, add natural gas and assume we care about expense not Co2, and suddenly it costs the same to heat and cool a home even where I live in Michigan where it gets down to -5f and up to only 95f.
@@pancake5830 anywhere with decent snowfall is gonna have snow caked roofs anyways, plus heating is easier than cooling.
Another cool addition would be changing road design (protected bike lanes and dedicated infrastructure), density to reduce travel distance to basic necessities, and implementation of zero emissions public transit such as light rail
There need to be a lot more trams in that city.
What a creative and nice way to visualize this paper. Great video!
I know that a certain Angory Tom would be very pleased with this style of visual presentation. Well done, good sir!
On the white roofs, I'm wondering if you've seen NightHawkInLight's attempts to make light-reflecting paint that's specifically designed to radiate solar energy back into space? His attempts so far aren't the most practical for actual application yet (specifically, the formula is very difficult to actually paint across a large surface), but the samples that he produced (with recipe shared in the video) did seem to genuinely work to produce a cooling effect over and above generic white paints. Thought you'd find it interesting if you're not already following!
Honestly IMO, cities should mandate that at least 1/3 of all public surfaces be covered by tree shade at all times.
What an absolutely fabulous way to explore this topic!
Phenomenal video!
The problem with adding greenery to cities that nobody talks about is that the small patches of grass and shrubs tend to die off pretty quickly in urban environments. It's neat to look at a wall with plants on it, or a small patch of plants in a parking lot, but those plants are going to die very quickly and will need to be replaced pretty regularly. Larger plants can live for longer, but trees have roots that will burrow down into pipes and around electrical conduit, and grow underneath streets and sidewalks, damaging all of them.
A general overview of everything I have learned about climate change over the last 15 years is very simple: Energy is everything. Capturing carbon can be done with things like biochar, but it is relatively small compared to our current emissions, and is therefore almost pointles when it comes to the climate if we do not stop putting that carbon out into the atmosphere in the first place. Solve the energy problem and everything else follows. And if you have surplus clean energy, you can use it do a lot of other environmentally friendly things, or even use it for direct carbon capture.
However, all the other "green" things like more vegetation, healthier soil, cities designed to be more walkable etc. are useful for other reasons, such as making our cities simply much nicer places to live.
I think many people confuse "environmentally friendly" with "cutting CO2 emissions". For example, plastic pollution is often discussed when talking about climate change, but the issues aren't that closely connected. It does help the climate a bit if less plastic is used, but that is a very minor part of the emissions problem. The Pacific garbage patch isn't relevant to climate change. (Or is it? Maybe Simon could do a video about this.)
The ocean is a huge oxygen source and carbon sink. The more damage done to the ocean the less effective it is. It’s all so closely linked
> The Pacific garbage patch isn't relevant to climate change. (Or is it? Maybe Simon could do a video about this.)
You're right, it's not particularly relevant. It'll have _some_ effect as it affects the albedo slightly, but the density of garbage in the garbage patch is quite low - a few items per square meter or less. It's not exactly the floating landfill we tend to visualize when we hear "garbage patch".
The big problem with the garbage patch (and marine pollution in general) is the effect it has on local ecosystems - killing off some species while promoting the growth of others. As with everything we do, nature will eventually find a new equilibrium, but "eventually" could be centuries, millennia or even longer depending on how much damage is done. In the meantime us humans with much-shorter-than-that lifespans are stuck changing our way of life to compensate for any of the more immediate problems it creates such as species extinction.
Marine pollution is absolutely a problem, but its not anywhere near as big a problem as climate change with respect to the future of our planet and the things living on it (including ourselves). From my experience, there seems to be a sizeable overlap between the group of people who want us to stop using plastic straws and grocery bags, and those who want to distract us from climate change via "individual action" and "personal responsibility" rhetoric. It's not a perfect overlap, but it's large enough to be questioned.
How do you make plastic? :)
@@MrHardzio4Fun See "How can we stop burning fossil fuels if we still need everything else they make?"
@@miguel5785 I know, I'm just saying that it is connected to CO2 emissions right now.
And like with everything else - if it is not cheaper or significantly more convinient it won't change.
like the carbon sinking ideas but would definitely add public transport (electric trolly, light rail, underground subway, etc)
Also make it more foot and bike friendly
Get rid of ugly useless parking lots unless you want to keep them empty for skaters.
Fantastically informative and a refreshing take with the visuals! Good job Dr C!
I loved the use of a model for this presentation. The content falls short and stops to early in the process. Cities need to be reshaped for walking and human powered bicycles. Model adding biking and walking infrastructure to eliminate cars. Railways and trans between cities and distant neighbors can also be modeled. This will cut carbon substantially. Model mixed use City with stores, manufacturing, schools and housing mixed in each small block or neighborhood. Cutting carbon for shipping products. Put in canals and waterways for large containers and carbon sink using canal green strips. Produce all vegetable food locally organically and ban meat consumption. Model local food production, processing, storage. In other words do a Part 2 that makes real changes rather than putting a green bandage on a broken system. Thanks for your work.
Fantastic video! From talking into a camera in the only free corner of the house to making an entire video illustrated by a detailed diorama, I love the transformation this channel is going through and that I am able to help even a tiny bit with this project.
This is genuinely one of your best videos yet, Simon. Looking forward to more videos like this from the studio!
Classic greenwashing. Keeping large parkings lots, having no pedestrian acess, no bus or bike lanes. Just making the roofs green.
I agree. Needs to be more bike friendly. Electric trolly bus, street cars and light rail for public transport. Forget the above ground parking lots
@@louishennick6883 Go clear down a forest to implement the city Idea you have planned. The only green city is one never made. Man is a plague to nature, and always has been since the inception of civilization. We are an invasive species everywhere, have destroyed practically every habitat there was, whipping predators off the face of the earth because they ate our livestock, thinning down herd of while animals from millions to thousands, purging forests and fields for farms and cities.
Yeah also needs a little more density to reduce travel times and by extention overreliance on cars.
Oh and energy efficiency and electrification of the buildings is a big one as well.
Did you mean: Access?
Yeah.
I really wish climate scientists would talk about algae as an alternative to direct air carbon capture, there's already testbed algae farms out there using solar power and sea water to create massive amounts of algae which can then be turned into endless products including fertilizer or even just straight burying it for locking its carbon away. JustHaveAThink did a video on this a few years ago and I wish it got more attention, because it's infinitely more viable than DAC ever could be.
Best vid in ages, loved the approach!!
Your presentation style is much more light and captivating this way Simon! The studio is paying off.
I love miniature cities! Please do more of them!
Love the gradual change of the city, it makes the argument more impactful
1:05 Wait, really? I'm curious how that stat was arrived at cause I was always told cities are more carbon efficient than rural or suburban living due to lower land use and transportation emissions.
They might be more efficient but they still produce more carbon emissions in total
It's usually a misattribution of emissions.
The emissions of rural areas mostly exist to support cities, but get counted as "rural". It makes the emissions per person look bad because most of the people it supports aren't counted.
The worst of both worlds is the suburban sprawl, which may be what you're thinking of.
Weirdly, the opportunities for low carbon living are probably greatest in that sprawl which is currently worst.
If the private monopolies of the electricity grid can be broken, or regulated, then the opportunity for near zero carbon energy production is huge. Nearly all the cost of installing solar (in most countries) is permitting. A process that literally takes the network 2 minutes, but which they will happily charge tens of thousands for and introduce months of delay, and then only permit sizes far smaller than the network can actually handle.
If that cost is eliminated people will install solar themselves, and in quantities that make suburbs zero carbon energy producers.
@@clf400 He was saying they produce disproportionately more, 70% of emissions for 50% of people.
@@massimocole9689 disproportionately more in total not per person
@@clf400 Well, it is per person, because if the 70% of emissions and 50% of people statements he said is true, then that's more emissions per person. If 50% of people are producing 70% of emissions, then those people are producing more emissions per person than the 50% people producing the remaining 30% of emissions.
A very captivating video and wonderful execution! I am glad to see you exploring new ways of visualising topics in the new studio. Keep up the good work!
Great job Simon! I love the visuals to show your points. 😊
The channel @edenicity explores what a sustainable city would look like. Hint, creating walkable and bikeable cities without cars is the key that unlocks an amazingly better quality of life.
This is such a well produced video, this channel is so underrated!
Great video! Glad to see you're already getting good use out of that table!
thanks for the great video! really fun visualization of the different effects :D
It would be so interesting how we could rebuild our city from a blank slate, but yeah we need to keep working within the bounds of the existing structures and improve from there.
I don't usually comment much on UA-cam, as things I watch are often different from what content I produce anyways, but I've stumbled upon your channel a couple weeks ago and have been finding the videos very insightful... But this one particularly was just incredible. So figured I'd take the extra step to share my appreciation, thank you for the amazing video!
This was really nicely done, I loved the way you made the explanations so enjoyable and beautifully illustrated!
This was really cool, I'd love to see more videos with this presentation style!
8:46 Not sure how viable it is but I like the idea of having greenhouses on the roofs of these buildings (especially residential ones) that the CO2 pumps into. You could plant crops that thrive in high CO2 enviroments and potentially provide a source of food security for local communities.
This
afaik plants that fix carbon the fastest for the least amount of water are C4 photosynthesis plants (CAM photosynthesis is actually even more efficient, but its mostly cactuses and they really don't grow that fast), mostly grasses. Sugar cane, cereals like maize and wheat, and rice are all really powerful carbon sinks, which is why we make fuel out of them. Caveat: some of the modern day crops are selected to yield a LOT of grains per harvest, and require a fuckton of water to grow, so maybe investment in older, less inbred crops (heirloom corn, for example) could be a lot more beneficial.
The food production from gardens like that is beyond negligible. It shouldn't be used as an argument.
@@zesky6654 As an argument for what? I mean, I think community gardens are a good thing - for many reasons - and we should have more of them anyway, even if they're not major food producers.
That they would exist in the vicinity of higher CO2 is somewhat incidental to my desire that they would exist at all.
The sound of a bee at 2:40 genuinely scared the bugger out of me
Beautiful way to put a paper into concrete (ah!) meaning. The relative importance of the solution it present, now and in the future, compared to the we-know-we-need-to-but-would-rather-not, emission reduction side of things, really puts things into perspective.
Well done.
that little city building was so cathartic
please do this every Video😊
An excellent video! Love the visualisation and the way you describe things!
always enjoy your videos and like the style in this one. Look forward to seeing you and Ben play with toys in your new city :)
Simon your videos are flawless. I'm thrilled to keep learning about these topics
I notice how there is no mention of getting rid of cars, for intracity travel, thus forcing more walkable areas and public transit which will cut down on carbon emissions as well as lots of many things
This is such a beautiful video, Simon! You absolute gem.
Enjoyed the scale modelling, a lot of time to create that layout, thank you 👍
i really enjoyed this :D made imagining it all, holding everything in my head easier and highly entertaining!
Good to see transit briefly shown. Even a diesel bus is several orders of magnitude less carbon than if all the riders drove cars; trains are even better. While electrifying them would help a bit, their real reductions are in their capacity, so don't throw out your bus system just because they're not electric.
One of your best Dr Clark. Great video
Two things stand out to me after watching this: 1. you showed a lot of plant life on the sides of tall buildings. I vaguely recall the urban planning and train enthusiast youtuber Adam Something pointing out the dangers of doing so both in terms of weight-load on the building and in terms of caring for the plants in a way that doesn't risk harming nearby humans. 2. the line "some more secular than others" seems like it's irrelevant to the video. I'm not sure why you included that.
Was looking for a reference to Adam Somethings comments about plants on buildings
The term you're looking for is greenwashing. "Look how eco this single, car only accessible store, with a large parking lot is - it has a white/green roof !
Of course you can freely pollute, we will just capture it back, no biggie"
@@randoguy7488 Did you reply to the wrong comment? I didn't describe anything that matches your definition of greenwashing and the rest of your comment basically just summarized one of the later points in the video, after the points I was referring to.
This was a wonderful and hopeful video. Alongside the other necessary changes, it paints a nice view of a potential future.
I hope you also stomped some space marines across that city of optimistic future people.
Really enjoyed this!
What a genius way to convey that information, this deserves to be shown in schools
Who else thought of Adam something when he started putting greenery on the buildings? 😅
As fan of science, city planning, AND scale modeling, this is perfect
9:00 I was dreading an EV charging station... but I shouldn't've been, your urbanism videos have all been great!
P.S. the production quality and originality of this was amazing and I loved it
I love this video, I think it's important to inspire people about fighting climate change, doomerism is so sad.
Some focus on designing buildings to use as little energy as possible through vernacular design (wind towers, water cooling and shaded windows in hot countries and natural insulation and sun capture in colder climates) would have been interesting since its a big part of how we might reduce our emissions
This was a really lovely video - I like your little houses!
Such an entertaining way to present this paper!
holy shit this is so cute
This was a sh!t ton of work, I’m sure, and I don’t have the expectation that this will be the need style of the channel BUT I will love every upcoming video in this style
1:39 Addendum: there are studies that show a potential negative effect of adding green to a place. At least, indiscriminate reforestation, that is. Leaves DO provide shade, but in some places the amount of sun cam actually warm up a place if cooling through transpiration is limited. This is particularly true to plants that retain more water, like ones from drier climates. Also, not all tropical, subtropical and temperate climates are made equal. Fine study of the local native vegetation is most needed, something that costs a lot upfront to do, so some cities won't be able to implement it. At least most of those cities are also not contributing much.
Damn that was awesome!
You should look into hempcrete as a building material. It isn't structural, but when combined with timber and carbon sequestering cement (depending on the building type), a lot of carbon can be sequestered quickly (hemp grows atleast 2x faster than trees and can be grown in a crop rotation on agricultural land). This could also be used as a byproduct of hemp production (which can be used for food and fibre and many many materials), and it can sequester carbon in soil with their roots and require far less water and fertiliser than crops like cotton (and can even bioaccumulate some heavy metals in soils). Other huge benefits include preferable thermal qualities (high insulation and thermal mass), ease of construction (useful for places where there is a high demand for new builings but a shortage of construction workers), air quality (no VOCs from petrochemical building materials), passive humidity regulation (this can prevent mold forming), and fire resistance (This could be especially important for cities and places that are at risk of wild fires). Not to mention the sound insulation properties which make these well suited for apartments which are far more energy efficient than houses by default. When I found out about this material I was shocked that more people don't know about it, so if you could possibly make a video on it or even just mention it I think that would help a lot for the awareness of this great material. Maybe in a video about hemp in general as an ecofriendly alternative to other crops/materials?
when you want to do arts and crafts but need to post something 😉
I tease. it obviously took some work to produce this
What a beautiful story telling (and showing)!
Trees are also like 70% water and water has an amazing capacity for heat. The more water the more stable the tempreture.
Commenting for the algorithm! Love this concept Simon!
amazing and creative way to engage us with the information!
Well, now I know why it's been a while since the last video.
By the way, that was some pretty cool modelling too.
love the video!!, although i wish bike lanes where added, it would be cool to see as its better for people and environment and its an even better substitute for cars!
Brilliant! One of the best videos I've seen from you Simon.
this was amazing, I watched it on nebula first, and was shocked to see it only had 15k views.
the work you put into education is so important. this was a really interesting watch
Building that city looked like so much fun!
I’m going back to Minecraft now…
Thank you for making this Simon!
This reminds me of making train models when I was a kid. Especially that classic grass in a bag.
What a beautiful video! Thank you Simon and Luke :)
This is such a cool way to explain it
Amazing video! Creative way to Illustrate!
Love this, great video, Simon!
I think it's important to emphasise that green spaces should be made up from locally native plants. You can not effectively restore biodiversity with exotic plants. Planting exotics in my view, further disconnects people from nature.
This is such a cool little city visualization! Though I'd like to see a version of this that's changing transport modes, especially in game form.
If anyone knows of a game that lets you build cities freely (not constrained to car centric modes like city skylines but more in depth than townscaper) let me know!
This is such a good video Simon! Beautiful!
Indoor air capture is (though like you said, pretty limited) actually clever, and I hadn’t heard of that before. One of the problems with carbon capture (including direct air capture) is concentration - though CO2 ppm is high for the climate, in the world of chemical separations it’s agonizingly small. Thats why it’s more cost efficient to slap CC on a CO2 rich process stream than on a flue and much more than outdoor air. But using our respiration as a “free” concentrating step is clever. In a world where our buildings are sealed so tight that we need to deliberately bring in fresh air to lower CO2 levels, well, it sorta makes sense to use the “CO2-enriched” stream instead of putting that DAC machine outside.
Another huge way to heavily reduce co2 is utilizing permaculture, and all our advances in agriculture such as greenhouses, while reducing the heavy logistic co2 emissions caused by shipping food. And this is all done by first removing laws that prevent farming or even small gardening/community gardening and then allowing/teaching people to garden using permaculture principles and methods.
There are plenty of benefits to this along with reducing co2, the biggest being decreasing or even eliminating food shortages, and reducing plastic waste that come with shipping if any.
Also Degroth will heavily heavily aid in reducing our co2 footprint.
The solarpunk-lite model city is lovely!
Mind you, we could keep our rooves red but still give them the ability to reflect a ton of light by simply having a special kind of paint that reflects most of the infrared and UV just as well as it does the red color spectrum, while only absorbing the rest of the tiny visible spectrum.
Great video, clearly explained and engaging!
I loved the diorama visuals!
I wonder why we just dont put solar panels on as many roffs as possible (if they have a good alignment and not to much shade of course)?
Oh boy the little city is just gorgeous!
Great video, I really like these models!
3:50 What a cool magic trick The video is great. We hope that these proposals will soon be implemented in places where it is possible.
Awesome video and very informative on top of that!
Love the visuals!
This was really well made!
Cooling paint and passive cooling seem like such an easy win.
Although maybe in practice it doesn't stay white in a grimy city still burning fuel. And the environmental impacts could be complicated, like what if it is brighter then the moon at night and disturbs animals.