How Many Fossils to Go an Inch? (ft. Robert Krulwich)

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A beautiful guest video by Robert Krulwich and Nate Milton
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17 авг 2022

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Комментарии : 2,4 тыс.

@boggybolt6782 Год назад

Also useful knowing why these trees piled up and buried underground instead of rotting and decaying like they would today. The trees, just like modern ones, were made out of lignin, which was unfamiliar to microorganisms and therefore could not be 'digested' and broken down into more useful stuff like they are today. This caused them to pile up instead of breaking down, and once microorganisms figured out how to break down lignin, this piling up stopped. In essence, all of the coal on earth comes from a single time period, between the first creation of lignin and when it finally was able to be broken down. It's a somewhat similar situation to what we have right now with plastic. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-b34al8YmQSA.html

@TheAlchaemist Год назад

I was totally expecting that to be mentioned in the video. This comment should be pinned.

@mikewolfe4822 Год назад

Yup. And the period where coal formed is called, not by accident, the Carboniferous period.

@doggonemess1 Год назад

I always found that amazing. Now, if we didn't burn them for fuel, in millions of years all the peat bogs around the world would become the next batch of coal.

@Boold198891 Год назад

Yea Thats the point :D No more coal or oil

@samwise6834 Год назад

I actually know the answer to this. It's lignin. The polymer that makes trees grow tall evolved long before other organisms developed a way to break it down. So bugs, bacteria, and fungi couldn't eat the wood so it just piled up. Just like plastics today.

@technetium9653 Год назад

I was expecting an explanation of the possibility of burning newly dead bodies for electricity

@loli_shizuku Год назад

Same

@landonknapp4014 Год назад

Same

@gurbanguliberdimuhamedov4228 Год назад

@AdityaSingh-gu8nz Год назад

Happy birthday sparsh

@Xathon Год назад

Yup, I thought it was gonna be something like "in ideal conditions, how much energy can we get from a fresh corpse"

@tomdom_0143 Год назад

I’m a marine biologist. I know this stuff like the back of my hand. But I have never seen a RU-vid video that will stick with me as much as this one. Never seen one that is so captivating and interesting. Never seen one so intriguing. I will have to go and look for more Robert Krulwich.

@JAHWH Год назад

I just hate that a video like this gets half a million views. It's sad this message just doesn't resonate with people, even when its put together so well.

@the_expidition427 4 месяца назад

@@JAHWH People are burning minerals good stuff

@burkejohnson4539 4 месяца назад

Robert Krulwich used to co-host the Radiolab podcast. I urge you to check it out, the old episodes with Robert especially are very interesting. They explore science, humanity, philosophy, life, etc.

@knightning3521 4 месяца назад

you clearly dont know this stuff off the back of your hand, cause hes off by a factor of a thousand. its 55billion tons per year, NOT TRILLION tons as he says in the video. rewatch the video 5:22 , he used the wrong numbers in his math. in reality its about 0.019 earths per year. still a lot, but his claims are utterly insane and should have sparked some doubt if you were actually knowledgeable in this subject. If you get back to me with calculations even slightly near the 100 earths per year, i will apologize.

@knightning3521 4 месяца назад

@@JAHWH its put together terribly, i checked his math and its wrong, he messed up hardcore and used 55 trillion tons instead of 55billion tons. frustrates me to hell that no one bothered to put any effort into the math here. not the author, not his team, not minute physics and not a single fucking person apart from me out of the half million people who watched this. half a million people watched this and thought 6875 000 kg of fossil fuel per person per year sounds about right. I have low expectations for humanity, but Christ at this rate we arent going to make it.

@KuruGDI Год назад

The message behind this video is really good. It's not judgmental, but tells you straight up front how much energy we are using and what this equates to.

@randomanon2999 Год назад

It omits telling how much of this fuel there still is, a really obvious thing to address

@KuruGDI Год назад

@@randomanon2999 But a really hard thing to answer. The results can vary very much depending on what you are looking for. Total count of barrel oil? Part of said sum that can be extracted without being so incredibly expensive that it will no longer be used as fuel? Part of said sum that could be used but should not if we don't want to return earth to the CO2 levels it had before life even began? The amount also shifted over time in the past. So many times they said we reached _peak oil_ but we always were able to extract more and more from the earth. IMHO it's a good thing that they did not answer the _How much is left_ question since it doesn't really fit the rest of the video.

@57thorns 5 месяцев назад

@@randomanon2999 It does tell us that beyond any doubt, there is no way for the current fauna and flora to absorb all this old carbon we release.

@iotaje1 5 месяцев назад

@@KuruGDIThere's also the fact that we are actually past peak conventional oil, which was around 2005-8. Yes we keep extracting more but these are uncommon reserves, things like tar sands, and they are more expensive to tap into.

@shadowcat314 4 месяца назад

And without any climate nonsense. Great video, this should be shown in schools.

@menseph22 Год назад

I never realized until now how much I missed Robert's voice on radio lab. This is both a testament to Robert's narrations and the current crew there that are still as captivating while giving the show a new feeling.

@pasikavecpruhovany7777 Год назад

Without Robert wasn't radiolab for me. Maybe I'll give it another try after a while.

@thetooginator153 Год назад

Alexandru - Nice observation! When I heard his voice in this video, I got a nice, comfortable feeling. It’s interesting that simply hearing a voice evokes such positive feelings.

@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 Год назад

His voice is pretty much _the_ NPR voice.

@FredHsu Год назад

Where can we go to find Robert’s work post RadioLab?

@shibasurfing Год назад

@@pasikavecpruhovany7777 It’s still excellent but I do miss him so.

@kayj312 Год назад

This was beautiful. That last model about “using 100 earths every year” should be used a lot more in public campaigns.

@Lattamonsteri Год назад

Maybe, but that just makes me think how many millions of years of that fossil mass we can still spend :D it doesn't sound too bad on its own when I don't know enough about other factors.

@EastBurningRed Год назад

Some rough calculations (using numbers from this video) shows that our sun burns through about a million earths’ worth of biomass every year. Don’t worry though, still plenty left to keep going.

@nooneknowsme7538 Год назад

This is basically nothing. Given millions of years to store all this carbon - even with 100x pace humanity will go extinct without even using 5% of all that stuff :)

@kayj312 Год назад

@@nooneknowsme7538 we might not use all of it but not all of it is equally accessible. Looking past the sustainability issue, we must use more destructive methods like fracking that causes increasing amounts of damage to the environment to get those harder to reach fossil fuels. It’d be nice if napkin math was all it took to figure that we’ll be just fine but unfortunately things seem to be more complicated and often have compounding effects.

@fureversalty Год назад

@@kayj312 I remember seeing a youtube or quora comment or something of that sort say something to the tone of 'we'll never truly run out; it'll just get too expensive to retrieve, forcing us to utilize what we have more sparingly, or transition to alternate fuel sources.'

@wojciechwilimowski985 Год назад

You just dethroned Kurzgesagt in the "most existential crises per minute of video" competition

@peterschmid1612 Год назад

Robert is such a talented presenter. This video is phenomenal

@PKConnolly1 Год назад

I love the term "old sunshine" for fossil fuels, never though of it that way

@mriandecker6533 Год назад

i had to watch that part again, "ravenous for old sunshine" really is a different way to put it

@danielbass09 Год назад

Exactly. And so weird pro oil people prefer their old sunshine to current sunshine eg solar power for energy. And are anti renewables.

@frostchain2362 Год назад

@@danielbass09 While I agree with you, renewables aren't the be-all-end-all in this scenario. We still have a lot of problems to work through before they're even close to being ready to take over. One of the most important is efficient grid-scale storage to smooth out the largely intermittent renewable generators. And we can't just keep throwing batteries at the problem, lithium is finite just like coal and oil.

@hurrdurrmurrgurr Год назад

@@frostchain2362 The answer to the baseload question is nuclear.

@frostchain2362 Год назад

@@hurrdurrmurrgurr Maybe, that's what I'm leaning towards too. Unfortunately, the discovery of large natural gas deposits in the US has brought the price of new gas turbine generators even lower than nuclear plants. That used to be a core advantage of nuclear, its return on investment. Sure, they were ludicrously expensive up-front, but they cost next to nothing to run. At least they used to, like I said, now natural gas has taken the seat.

@leoncana Год назад

I was expecting a creepy modern solution, instead I got a rather beautiful, mind blowing, explanation of fossil fuels.

@DracarmenWinterspring Год назад

I think I missed the joke because they changed the title, what was it before?

@leoncana Год назад

@@DracarmenWinterspring more or less 'Powering our world with dead bodies' or something to that effect. Honestly kinda metal.

@theincrediblehulk2865 Год назад

@@DracarmenWinterspring Burning the Dead for Power (ft. Robert Krulwich)

@andy-the-gardener Год назад

@@leoncana i think thats called biofuel, by far the biggest form of 'renewable energy'. except thats living stuff, ie rainforests. well it might be dead when its burned. but i dont think the capitalists care, as long as it burns. so might not be so green or renewable. ie its a big pile of neoliberalist horseshit lies like solar, wind, net zero, carbon capture, ecars, sustainable development, the planet isnt overpopulated etc etc etc

@deleted-something Год назад

What

@MarkWitucke Год назад

So lovely to hear Krulwich’s voice again. It does not disappoint. Thank you, Robert!

@northbaseuk882 Год назад

This is one of the first videos I've ever watched that truly made me want to change.

@ananya.a04 Год назад

The animation is off the charts once again, and the information provided is great too! 👍🏻

@Nastiazik Год назад

*🔥 Friends, I need your assessment* I am from Russia, but I run an independent and honest channel in English, I produce videos related to history and politics. I would like to get your assessment of my latest issue, it's about Putin's successor and their regime of Putinism… I'm sure many people will be interested to see. Thank you!

@pumbi69 Год назад

Are you a bot

@briand8090 Год назад

Reminds me of Aeon Flux animation

@nawtmyrealnamelol Год назад

i can't tell if this is sarcastic or not because the animation looked like MS paint

@prone666 Год назад

Best part was the asshole of the cat.

@lundylow Год назад

I've missed Robert on Radiolab. His voice is so calming and his laugh infectious.

@whimbox9648 Год назад

I thought he was retired from Radiolab but he keeps appearing on it doesn't he? He was on the most recent 9-Volt Nirvana episode about transcranial electrostimilation

@joa6984 Год назад

@@whimbox9648 reruns

@troyclayton Год назад

More Robert Krulwich, please! This was like a little bonus Radiolab with animation, very cool. Thanks!

@BenBen-bb7bb Год назад

This is so brilliantly done, great job to the animators and everyone else included

@A3Kr0n Год назад

Right down to the cat's pucker ass.

@JohnKolendaHOU Год назад

This was incredible. Just beautiful, scientific storytelling. Thank you all for sharing it!

@user-wb4ty2ye7s Год назад

It was a gross exaggeration that was framed to make it seem wrong to use fossil fuels. This video was nothing but propaganda. But you idiots will see when the grid can't handle your electric cars and you are freezing to death in your homes.

@oneworldonehome Год назад

"The world must be restored, not only to provide for the fundamental needs of people today and in the future, but also to secure humanity's freedom in a universe where freedom is rare. For you must be self-sufficient in this universe, or you will become dependent upon others and they more than you will determine the terms of engagement and your ability to create and to determine your own future." To learn more about humanity's destiny within a universe full of intelligent life, read Marshall Vian Summers' work which is completely free online.

@johnchapman5125 Год назад

Thank you for sharing this piece of wisdom.

@adamreynolds3863 Год назад

4:08 grandma smokin a cig😂😂😂😂 so accurate

@akselskjevdal6358 Год назад

This really put into perspective how long the earth have been around to produce all the fossil fuels we use today. Great video

@agate_jcg Год назад

The start of this video is great, but I think the numbers toward the end are wrong, unless there's a factor I'm missing. At 5:24, the claim is that 55 *trillion* tons of fossil fuel were consumed in 2018: according to the IPCC, this figure is 10 *billion* tons. In comparison, the total amount of carbon in living things on Earth today is estimated by the IPCC at 450 *billion* tons, mostly in the form of land plants. Thus, we are burning about 1/50th of an Earth's worth of ancient life per year in fossil fuels, not 100 Earths' worth. It's possible that the video's calculation is intended to account for the fact that only a fraction of the living carbon on the ancient Earth got fossilized, but the video specifically says "55 trillion tons of fossil fuels" rather than "55 trillion tons of ancient life", and in any case it doesn't cite a source for the conversion factor, and I'm not aware of scientific literature that pins it down. Anyway, the caption "2018: 55 trillion tons of fossil fuels" at 5:24 is highly misleading or wrong, but I'm not sure whether it's a calculation error on the video authors' part, an unstated assumption, or a misunderstanding by me. See figure 5.12 here: www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Chapter05.pdf

@JontyLevine Год назад

This is depressingly typical of the kind of environmental doom-mongering we get served up today. Charismatic speaker delivers pseudo-scientific half-truth over the top of beautiful animation, gets signal-boosted by reputable channel, doesn't really conclude with anything beyond a vague sense of sadness, bunch of people watch and it makes them sad and not motivated to do anything because the problem seems so incomprehensibly vast that an individual person cannot possibly make a difference, and the one guy who bothers to fact-check it is only visible in the comments if you sort by 'recent'. Of course, if the video was UNDER-estimating fossil fuel consumption and/or the risks posed by climate change, it would be considered dangerous misinformation and possibly even removed from this platform. But it's okay to misinform your audience, as long as it only makes them MORE frightened of environmental doom and gloom. And people really consider this ethical.

@timseguine2 Год назад

Best number I could find for the amount of carbon in the entire atmosphere is 875 billion tons. Based on that alone, I don't see how the 55 trillion figure can be right. My guess is that it is not the burnt fossil fuel itself, but the amount of ancient carbon that it corresponds to, since that was the theme of the video. Based on the 2 tree comparison only yielding half a ton of modern day coal, it gives an extra conversion factor of something on the order 1000-10000, which is about the discrepancy you indicated.

@thesteaksaignant Год назад

Also it seems to be a caption error because the audio says "if we add up all the ancient life it turns out that what we burn in a year weighs 100 times more than all life on earth today" And later around 5:59 it says " 54 trillion tons of ancient carbon", obviously referring to the weight of the original plants, not the weight of the fossil fuel.

@colin351 Год назад

Yes that immediately struck me as making no sense. Consider all the trees in all the forests in the world and how much a tree weighs and intuitively there's just no way we burn that weight in fuel in just one year, let alone 100+ times as much.

@jonnenne Год назад

@@JontyLevine individual people are fairly irrelevant in climate change to begin with. Governments and corporations are the ones with the keys

@awesome24712 Год назад

From the title I thought this was going to be about some Brave New World, Soylent Green esque dystopia where human corpses are burned 🔥 😅

@Archimedes.5000 Год назад

Man why dystopia, dead people are burned all around the world so why not use it to our benefit

@designtechdk Год назад

I mean, human corpses are burned today too, just not for energy.

@WillHellmm Год назад

double use crematorium

@bugjams Год назад

We really should. Dead bodies don't have a purpose anymore. Our obsession with the afterlife and preserving bodies is creepy and weird when you think about it. It's like the Stages of Grief but we never leave the Denial phase.

@drsloanski Год назад

Give it time

@zane4ov444 Год назад

Beautiful, expanded my mind, thank you.

@partingofways Год назад

This video was really good, nothing about it was particularly abnormal, but the artstyle, robert's voice, the longer video that feels more like a story than a science lesson. Just really hit all the little good spots

@pim-5865 Год назад

1000 kWh / month!!! That's insane! The average household in the Netherlands uses 3500 kWh / year!

@sam512 Год назад

Damn, didn’t realise that, that’s insanely much

@swe223 Год назад

Switzerland here, I was thinking exactly the same. US standards I guess...

@jonnenne Год назад

The US home might be using electricity for heating while most homes in Europe are heated with other means

@alexsiemers7898 Год назад

@@jonnenne but also the US has many many times more AC units for example than houses in the UK (something like 80% of US homes versus

@josorr Год назад

@@jonnenne I think the US has bigger refrigerators too.

@elijahberegovsky8957 Год назад

Wooow! This voice, this nostalgic voice of Radiolab! Robert once again catalyzing the creation of a masterpiece

@Clark-Mills Год назад

Excellent presentation and lovely to hear Robert Krulwich's voice again... miss the old RadioLab... way back when... Thanks!

@MonkeyRecords Год назад

Highly illuminating video thanks!

@ruolbu Год назад

A quick and very pleasant reminder that Rober Krulwich did not in fact DIE when he left Radiolab, he just went on to do other things. I always get a bit sad when his voice pops up somewhere, I just love his enthusiasm for things.

@reddead1417 Год назад

Phenomenal work. I know that they require more effort but please do more of these guest videos because they are just amazing.

@wannabewallaby1592 Год назад

this was the first time I've ever heard of him and wow, the way he narrates is really calming. Not to mention the animations and the info, such a good vid

@absoloodle37 Год назад

He narrated on the NPR podcast Radiolab before Jan 2020. If you liked this vid, you’ll love Radiolab.

@X1Y0Z0 Год назад

Thanks! I learned much today!

@SeeNickView Год назад

The narration was witty and intriguing enough to keep my attention and not be annoying! Fantastic video! Visuals were great too, especially reusing them whenever the narrator referred to similar ideas and concepts. Really cemented understanding

@LegoDork Год назад

If you liked the narration, listen to some old episodes of Radiolab. It's not the same now without Mr. Krulwich, but that's okay.

@Tadesan Год назад

Do you mean jewish?

@AlleyKatt Год назад

KRULWICH!!! I'm never disappointed after hearing a Robert Krulwich story, and the perspective that this story painted was artfully jarring. Fantastic animation, too.

@humphreywinnebago756 Год назад

ditto!

@rahultejarthur4941 Год назад

This is the most meaningful and relaxing video I ever saw on RU-vid

@lucadv1 Год назад

Love this voice and animation, thank you

@AdrianHereToHelp Год назад

This is a beautiful bit of science communication; the narration and the animation are both wonderful.

@FDragon07 Год назад

I love the animation for this video, and how crazy the amount we burn each and every year

@anabakhtar3774 Год назад

WE NEED more of these videos. His voice, the animation and the music make a perfect trio.

@Mystery-pd6jc Год назад

What a brilliant short film!

@werbnaright5012 Год назад

Everything about this video is beautifully done. The writing, voiceover, art, all the content is spectacular. Good work!

@sinom Год назад

Thought this would be about the feasibility of bodies as a power source

@nickthompson1812 Год назад

This is like the third comment I’ve read saying some very weird stuff like this. Was the title changed or something? I don’t understand what could’ve made you think this would be some weird video from the title: “How many fossils to go 1 inch?”

@dannydewario1550 Год назад

@@nickthompson1812 I'm also confused. Good thinking on your part that this was most likely due to a title change. Just going by the pessimistic tone of the video, perhaps the original title was something along the lines of "how many bodies have to be burned to move your car just an inch?"

@comradekirilov3483 Год назад

Fantastic collaboration

@JoeDzado Год назад

Excellent work, well written, easy to understand, but no mention of how much is left.

@writethatdown100 Год назад

I listened to radio lab for a long time and it good to hear Rboert Lrulwich's voice again

@MrRoboticBrain Год назад

Is this 1MWh/month figure accurate?! If so this is insane! that's more than 3x as much as an average European (4pers.) household!

@jonnenne Год назад

It isn't necessarily insane at all if heating is electric. 10 MWh/year is the average in the US. US uses a lot of energy oer capita, more than average in Europe though.

@Adam-ns2cr Год назад

Very normal. Insulation in the USA vs Europe is terrible. My bill in my 400 square meter house is about double that per month, 2000 kwh, mostly because of air conditioning and running the swimming pool pumps. It will go up too when I buy my Rivian electric SUV. At least the video tells us that coal is solar based and organic, so we can sleep well at night.

@nmexxx Год назад

I was Just thinking that. I use 1500kwh per years!

@manuelmagic9000 Год назад

I checked the comments looking for this message exactly. Thank you

@thorry84 Год назад

That's not really an accurate comparison, because even though Europeans don't use a lot of electric energy, they do use a whole lot of energy in terms of natural gas. Where Americans heat (or cool in the hotter places) their homes with electric heat pumps (AC), Europeans usually heat their homes with natural gas. If you then only compare electric energy used, it throws off the figures. Incorporating energy from natural gas is kinda tricky (due to unknown inefficiencies), but maybe somebody can do the calculation? Europe is now changing over to heatpumps slowly, because AC is needed due to hotter summers caused by climate change and natural gas is a limited resource compared to electric energy from renewable sources. It will be interesting to see in a decade or so how the comparison is then. I know I've run my AC pretty much all night every night lately due to extreme heat in Western Europe. I think the average American still uses way more energy than the average European, but the difference isn't as much as 3x. Edit: just checked some figures, Germany is about 7000kwh per person per year, where the US is about 13000kwh per person per year. So not quite double.

@emlmm88 Год назад

Omg I love Robert Krulwich. Thanks for bringing him on!

@Enkzan Год назад

This is so beautifully animated. I’m speachless.

@andrewkaylor2416 Год назад

Thank you for putting this together. It really helps visualize and understand the impact of actions that seem so mundane.

@nathon1942 4 месяца назад

They are mundane. There's a reason the video didn't include how long we could keep using fossil fuels, because it's a VERY long time and that doesn't fit the narrative, even though there are plenty of other reasons to not use fossil fuels like carcinogens released when it is burnt.

@randomize.4 Год назад

made me tear up. Very effective. Thanks for this

@AlwaysAwesome001 Год назад

Gullible. ✅

@Oba936 Год назад

Thank you so much! This is beautifully crafted!

@problemsolver3254 Год назад

they are wrong there is 1.1 trillion metric tons of organic life at least 30% of that will be carbon and wee only use 15 billion metric tons of fusel fuels but that said climate change it 100% real and posses an existential threat

@quinlanharsch 5 месяцев назад

I was genuinely excited to hear Robert Krolwich's voice outside of radio lab. What a rare treat.

@Lewiks Год назад

This was in every way brilliant! I also loved the narration, it somehow gave me Jurassic Park 1 park narrator vibes.

@brothermine2292 Год назад

To me the narrator sounded almost exactly like former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.

@Nevner Год назад

these animations are honestly just incredible. what an amazing work of art ❤️

@designer7130 Год назад

Just WOW!! This was the nest explainer video I've seen on this topic😍 THANK YOU🙇‍♂

@ChristSimd Год назад

Great Video, thank you!

@gomaddomag3847 Год назад

I love this style of animation and the narration!

@yours.anurag Год назад

Wow! Great video! Thank you Minute Physics for bringing us such informative and entertaining content. ❤️

@13thravenpurple94 Год назад

Great work 🥳Thank you 💜

@durragas4671 Год назад

OMFG it's Robert! Just the other day I was trying to remember the podcast he used to do for NPR because I miss him. Thank you!

@Mathieu-qx7bp Год назад

The music, the ambience, the animation... Is this... Lofi science?! LOVE IT More seriously, great stuff as usual, didn't that's where the video would go!

@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 Год назад

lofi science communication - narration to learn/study to

@quasar9768 Год назад

is 1000 kwh really the monthly average in the us?? because to me this is a ridiculous amount of electricity, unless, of course, the heating is also electric. then i can see a 1000 kwh being the monthly average

@buddyclem7328 Год назад

Electric heat and air conditioning is common in the US, but I use less than that in my small home. It's not all bad news though. Even though the US doesn't use much renewable energy, compared to fossil fuels, we are transitioning from coal to natural gas, which emits less carbon compared to coal. Consider also that even after losses from generation, and transmission of electricity, that heat pumps make up for those losses by being up to 400% efficient, because they don't generate heat, they merely move the heat. The channel Technology Connections has many great videos about heat pumps, and a wide variety of different technologies, from electric vehicles, to the humble kerosene lamp.

@darkalligraph Год назад

This is a beautifully animated and narrated video.

@yasminceleste3844 Год назад

What a wonderful video!

@abhijitborah Год назад

I too was assuming recycling of humans. But I was not dissatisfied at all. It was an impactful narration which has hit home for me and possibly for everyone else. Thank you. I hope this video reaches many many viewers.

@C0lon0 4 месяца назад

Imagine being such a poor country that you need to burn coal or petroleum to produce energy, Brazil is trully one of the few countries with more than 90% of eletricity production from renewables and the only country with more than 50 millions habitants who do that, and 40% of our fuel consumption for vehicles cames from the most green fuel source available, so instead of burning dead bodies for eletricity, just be like Brazil and you are good.

@no-nx3ip 4 месяца назад

@@C0lon0you are sad? Be happy. Homeless? Buy a house

@joshuasims5421 Год назад

A lot of the sunlight that fell on the ancient earth was reflected or lost. But much of it was locked in fossil fuels. A ton of coal or barrel of oil should represent some percent of an ancient day of sunshine. How many days do we burn per day now? I think that would be an interesting measure.

@Arjun-gu6gk Год назад

yeah!

@wopmf4345FxFDxdGaa20 Год назад

A rule of thumb one can use is that photosynthesis captures about 6% of the energy of sunlight, and sun shines at about 1 kW per square meter at best. With fossils, a lot of that 6% has been lost in the various conversion processes. Today, with solar panels that have 20% efficiency, the whole current human energy consumption could be met with just surprisingly small area in place like sahara that gets a lot of sun and has a lot of area. So sun in theory has totally enough energy to power whole human consumption.

@wopmf4345FxFDxdGaa20 Год назад

@@iwatchwithnoads7480 Actually above atmosphere it is a lot more; 1,36 kW / m^2. The 1 kW is at sea level on the surface. Either way, as said before, it is a rule of thumb, naturally it is affected by many things . . . Also when talking about how fossils were formed, I don't know can we expect that the radiation has always been at the same level as it is now.

@iwatchwithnoads7480 Год назад

@@wopmf4345FxFDxdGaa20 k I might've mixed up my area with the equator then. My bad

@wopmf4345FxFDxdGaa20 Год назад

@@iwatchwithnoads7480 😂😂 No problem, my numbers can very well contain mistakes as well. These above numbers I got yesterday from Wikipedia, so I would expect them to be now about right.

@FelipeKana1 5 месяцев назад

Amazing animation, text, and execution

@dakedres Год назад

Beautiful narration

@najarvis Год назад

Just a quick question because it's a bit unclear in the video, is the weight of everything we're burning the weight of the actual fuel or the weight of the organisms as they would have weighed when they were alive?

@RC_Engineering Год назад

The only thing that makes sense is that the weight of the organisms which make the fuel. The fuel itself is much much lighter than the original organisms, and there's no way we could ever collect and burn that much fuel if it was the weight of the fuel itself being equal to the weight of all life on earth x100

@kindlin Год назад

It's definitely the weight of the animals/plants as they were alive, that then gets transferred (at a really low efficiency) into the fuel we use today.

@cybisz2883 Год назад

Beautiful video, although I don't think you intended for the youtube cards at the end to block some of the credits. I've always *hated* those cards.

@Welisdoingwell 5 месяцев назад

Amazing video. Hope more people get to watch this.

@user-cv1jb9xv2p Год назад

🙏🏼👍🏼👍🏼 Thanks for the video

@Linvoilac Год назад

Could we have a link to the sources he used, for reference?

@luiz-sena Год назад

this guy has such a calming voice

@gunstorm05 Год назад

I want this guy to read me bedtime stories

@rossco8222 Год назад

That was an incredible video,wow!!

@ergosteur Год назад

This was beautifully calming and alarming at the same time.

@samwalker4438 Год назад

This is the best thing I’ve watched this year! Sorry (& also thank you) Henry/minute physics, you are generally brilliant but Robert and Nate’s video is something else!

@timothymclean Год назад

I was explaining something more like the Matrix's weird conservation-of-energy-violating human-power plot device. This is more interesting!

@LetsTakeWalk Год назад

The original script only mentioned humans as a sort of processor for The Matrix, and that the energy mainly came from fusion (which is still in the movie, everyone forgets).

@tekbox7909 Год назад

@@LetsTakeWalk yeah I think they decided to not go that route because it was overly complicated for the audience at the time so they just went with human batteries

@timothymclean Год назад

@@LetsTakeWalk The movie draws WAY more attention to the human-battery angle, which is the only explanation given for why humans are kept around, which is the entire reason the plot can happen. Focusing on that plot device is appropriate! And yeah, the draft did something more sensible, but that sensibility didn't survive long enough to be filmed, so it doesn't count (any more than the stupid ideas that were cut do).

@vaisakhvm1726 Год назад

Spectacular animation and the info shared were just beyond belief. Just wowwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!! Thanks mp for sharing :) :)

@geoffreyraleigh1674 Год назад

Loved this one

@altocumulusvirga2065 Год назад

I find the numbers at the end slightly confusing. We are clearly not burning 55 trillion tonnes of fossil fuels per year. It is roughly 10 billion tonnes of carbon (C - Atoms) per year. I assume that the 55 trillion tonnes relate to the total weight of the carbon in the ancient organisms, before a very small fraction of them were converted into oil/gas. Which is supported by the fact that todays biomass is roughly 550 billion tons of C.

@ferrabras Год назад

He's not talking about the fossil fuel, but the estimate weight of living creatures that produced the amount of fuel we are consuming. Lot of Nitrogen, Calcium also added up.

@reywashere5284 Год назад

Yup, this is an estimation of the ancient creature's total biomass, because that is what we can compare to the biomass here on earth now.

@justinmcgowen8889 Год назад

I'm confused by this too. Adding up the numbers for oil, coal, and natural gas, it's somewhere around 14-15 billion tons of raw fuel which agrees with the 10 billion tons of carbon. Quick looking seems to suggest most animals are 20-30% carbon and plants ~50% carbon, so it's definitely not just that. I think the total biomass is probably right. If you add total coal reserves to the total amount consumed, I think it's roughly 1.5 trillion tons of coal that was ever deposited. If this was deposited at a constant rate over the Carboniferous, it would be 25000 tons a year. We use about 500 million tons a year, so that is 20,000 years of coal per year. Figures for how much biomass the earth makes a year seem to be 100-150 billion, so that over 20,000 years would be 2 quadrillion tons C of biomass per year for coal. Land biomass is higher than sea biomass, so oil and natural gas can be neglected. I imagine biomass production was higher than 100-150 during the carboniferous, but only some of that is even viable to become coal (only 6% of Earth's land is peat bog or rainforest right now), and coal production was also likely not constant, so too many unknowns to get down to 55 trillion from that.

@CMZneu Год назад

4:49 That is a really confusing statement, because i imagine i takes a lot of dead organisms to make a tiny bit of fossil fuel (i would imagine less than 0.1%) because very little biomas of it end up becoming fossil fuel, so are we counting the alive weight? like a fully hydrated eating and breathing animal because then it does not seem all that surprising.

@problemsolver3254 Год назад

they are wrong up there is 1.1 trillion metric tons of organic life at least 30% of that will be carbon and wee only use 15 billion metric tons of fusel fuels but that said climate change it 100% real and posses an existential threat

@darkwingscooter9637 Год назад

The whole thing is just silly doom-mongering.

@marcop-mb506 Год назад

I loved the little laugh at 4:01. Great video, thank you

@Ducktility Год назад

Thanks for this. I always wanted to calculate this.

@igoregalado5590 Год назад

I really liked this video. The animation, the voicing, the music, and especially the writing. The phrasing that we treasure an ancient sunlight is somewhat... nostalgic, I guess? I'm not so sure how to say it myself.

@SpaceBeleren Год назад

One of the best narrations I've ever experienced. The animation matches pretty well with it too.

@misterfister4398 Год назад

This animation is simply beautiful, I'm speechless

@filmattic7907 Год назад

wow this video really puts things into perspective

@TheWhitePianoKeyProductions Год назад

What I found most suprising is that the average is 1000kwh per month in america? That's crazy.

@gabrielragum Год назад

I was so surprised I actually had to google it to believe it. Here in Brazil, the average is less than 160 kwh per month. The comparison probably isn't so absurd if other sources of energy are considered.

@AdeptStrategist Год назад

I'm suprised by how much coal an ancient tree could produce, I was honestly expecting the number of fossils to be a bit higher. I am a little dissappointed however, when I went to the description to check the sources, I didn't find any. Can I see the sources for this video? I remember minute physics putting sources in the description more often.

@byugrad1024 Год назад

That's the problem. Whenever you try to ask questions with this sort of thing, you are suddenly the bad guy. Sounds a lot less like science and a lot more like a scam to me. I agree we are putting carbon back into the atmosphere at unprecedented levels, but until anyone can come up with an alternative that actually works, it's all hype. The loudest people are actually the ones who have the largest carbon footprint. They justify flying around the world in jets just to get to their environmental summits. Until there is something better, I'll continue to service and operate my gas engines thank you. Sometimes I have to laugh at my neighbor who can only cut half his lawn in one day because his mower needs charging in between. And it can't cut through the growth of a full week, so he has to cut it twice a week. That's 4 nights per week he gets covered in grass clippings. Four times more than me! All to save on some small engine exhaust fumes which are cumulatively totally insignificant against the largest offenders, cars and homes, each with a semi-permanent flame burning inside.

@A3Kr0n Год назад

I love watching these pre-apocalyptic videos. This one's cheery!

@supernenechi Год назад

Technically, before the apocalypse happens every video will be pre-apocalyptic

@py-guru-jeebykrishalsharma2207 Год назад

That's one of the best guest videos I have ever seen

@raidenlightningbolt90 Год назад

For some reason I hoped this would be a "how much power do we get from literally burning the corpses of humans" type video but this was also very interesting to watch

@LimitedWard Год назад

The average human is estimated to contain 125,000 calories. A gallon of gasoline contains about 31,000 calories. Ignoring conversion loss, that mean burning one human would be equivalent to 3.6 gallons of gas and could get you 93 miles in an average car getting 25.7 mpg. Human's are actually way more efficient than cars. If a human could drink gasoline and convert it to energy, that gallon of gas would give them enough energy to bike over 900 miles!

@enolopanr9820 Год назад

@@LimitedWard it’s a good thing that humans who aren’t over 300 pounds do have a reliable source of fuel called food and are very able to travel by foot or on bike for very low cost

@melody3741 Год назад

WHY DOES EVERYONE THINK THIS ITS LITERALLY TALKING ABOUT FOSSILS

@BlurbFish Год назад

@@LimitedWard Be *very* careful whenever calories are mentioned, as kilocalories and calories are often used interchangeably (an error of factor 1000 is pretty significant). Here's some napkin math to sanity check your conclusion: 1 calorie is *defined* as the energy required to raise the temperature of 1 g of water by 1 degree celsius. A human body is roughly 70% water by mass, and maybe 70 kg total on average, for an average water mass of approx. 50 kg water. To heat the water of an average human body by one degree, you will need approx. 50 kcal (50000 calories). If your opening statement is correct, then the human body only has enough calories to heat its own water by approximately 2.5 degrees celsius. Given that a severe fever can raise the body's temperature more than that (obviously only using the body's own energy reserves), we can only conclude that the human body contains well beyond 125 kcal (approx. 30 kJ. Consider using the less ambiguous Joule instead.

@enolopanr9820 Год назад

@@BlurbFish a man of science 👏👏👏

@alexbolen3707 Год назад

Teachers should show this in their classrooms, this is amazing!

@gauthierruberti8065 Год назад

I really didn't expect such a good content

@cwillis92 Год назад

Not exactly what I was expecting but interesting none the less. Absolutely deserves a like & follow

@LFTRnow Год назад

Excellent video (and one of my fav narrators too) - now let's do this calculation for uranium or thorium (both are similar in energy content): 1 ton contains 20 BILLION kWh, over a million times the energy density of coal. The world extracted for use 170,000 TWh in 2018, (170 trillion kWh) so we divide (170,000 tril / 20 bill ) = 8,500 tons. 1 ton of water takes up 1 m3 (about 1 cubic yard), but uranium is ~20x denser so it only takes up 8500 / 20 = 425 m3 of space. That's a cube only 7.5 m (25 ft) on each side to power the WORLD annually. The solid "waste" takes up the same space. This is what the future of nuclear power could look like.

@llanowarshelves2105 Год назад

Amen!

@karl0ssus1 Год назад

If only total energy was the same as extractable energy. The nuclear fission future is not the near future. And the nuclear fission present consumes about 60000 tonnes of uranium a year to provide about 4% of global energy needs. This doesn't sound too bad, but uranium is a pretty scarce resource, and there is an estimated 130 year accessable fuel reserve at the current use rate. Running even half the world on nuclear fission would drop that to about 10 years of reserve.