It is shortly before twelve, the world community must now act quickly and decisively if the 1.5 degree target is to be met and the climate catastrophe to be averted. ”It was a wake-up call from Steven Chu, Robert Laughlin, Hartmut Michel and Brian Schmidt to the roughly three hundred young researchers who followed the lively discussion “Climate and Energy” on their computer screens on Wednesday morning.

The four Nobel Prize winners received support from the two German climate researchers Gerald Haug, President of the Leopoldina National Academy since 2020, and Nadine Mengis from the GEOMAR research center in Kiel.

However, as unanimously as they were about the causes and effects of climate change, so differently did they assess the measures necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Manfred Lindinger

Editor in the “Nature and Science” section.

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    Robert Laughlin (1998 Nobel Prize in Physics) from Stanford University opened the debate with two recent graphics from BP and the United States' Weather and Oceanography Agency (NOAA) showing the development of global energy consumption and the parallel rise in CO₂ concentration in the Atmosphere since 1994. Despite the doubling of the capacity for renewable energies, biodiesel and hydrogen, the proportion of fossil fuels has increased continuously, which is reflected in the growing carbon input.

    Nadine Mengis underscored how dramatic the situation is with current figures: around 400 gigatons of CO₂ could be released into the atmosphere in order to achieve the 1.5 degree target. With an unchecked annual emission of 42 gigatons of carbon dioxide, the budget would be used up in ten years. That is why emissions must be stopped immediately. This could be done using the CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) process, the storage of carbon dioxide in the deep rock before it gets into the atmosphere, Mengis added. There would be no risk that once stored CO₂ escapes unchecked into the atmosphere. Because carbon dioxide crystallizes out when it has been stored in the rock long enough.

    But are the technologies already available on the market to stop and reverse the development?

    This was asked by presenter Jim Skea from Imperial College London.

    Steven Chu (1997 Nobel Prize in Physics), who researches the new generation of rechargeable batteries and efficient CCS technologies and was Minister of Energy under Barack Obama for several years, sees many promising developments in the laboratories.

    Most of them are not yet ready for use.

    He cited battery technology as an example.

    Let's take advantage of all the options today

    In his opinion, it will be around ten years before there are powerful batteries on the market that can be recharged within five minutes and at the same time give electric cars a range of 200 kilometers at the price of an internal combustion engine. "If we had these batteries now or in a few years, driving on petrol or diesel would make little sense." A large part of the emissions would be eliminated. For Chu, there is still no mature solution in sight for chemical energy storage.

    For Laughlin, the dilemma is not so much a lack of ideas, but a lack of interaction between research, funding and entrepreneurship in order to bring developments into application and to focus on the problems to be solved. The interests would often diverge. “Energy is the central quantity in physics. We scientists know how to use them efficiently. There are mainly economic reasons why we do not exhaust the energy that nature supplies us. It is still cheaper to use fossil fuels than solar energy, for example. ”It is still difficult to counter the idea of ​​profit maximization in the economy. Laughlin's advice: One shouldn't wait for "the technology" from the laboratory,Instead, implement the existing technological and economic possibilities as quickly and efficiently as possible. Science and industry should now pull together.