Can our warming seas be air conditioned?
Last month I saw the Australian movie called 2040 shown in New Plymouth, NZ, promoted by Sustainable Taranaki. https://www.sustainabletaranaki.org.nz/ The 2040 trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-rTQ443akE Damen Gameau is the Australian filmmaker of 2040 and travels to multiple countries to show his audience what is being done and what can be done to improve our future.
In that movie (which will be coming to the US) there are several key learning points. One of those I hadn't heard of before was Marine Permaculture. I did a search on Daily Kos for that term and nothing came up. Have you heard about it?
One of the many sites Gameau visited was Woods Hole in Massachusetts to explore what’s being done regarding Ocean Permaculture. It turns out that seaweed is better at carbon sequestration than the Amazon Rain Forest. Marine or Ocean Permaculture is aiming to grow more seaweed, and increase the diversity of sea life which global overheating is destroying.
This statistic is shocking:
The oceans have absorbed 93% of the heat from global warming.
Without the oceans absorbing excess heat we’d have gone extinct long ago.
The heat is absorbed in the upper layers of the ocean. As there is increasing amounts of heat, the layer of warm water is becoming deeper and deeper. This deep layer of warm water that is blanketing the ocean has become so deep that it is preventing ocean upwelling.
In many parts of the world, a warming climate has prevented ocean upwelling—a natural process that brings nutrient-rich waters to the ocean surface which creates conditions for life in both aquatic plants and the animals that rely upon them. Without this natural upwelling, kelp forests and marine life seaweed farms are dying from lack of nutrition and overheating.
from www.climatefoundation.org › what-is-marine-permaculture
This same site, http://www.climatefoundation.org/what-is-marine-permaculture.html, shows the diagrams to demonstrate upwelling of nutrient rich colder water that occur naturally and that are thwarted with ocean warming. Ocean warming has devastated kelp forests. This foundation has developed techniques that aren’t complicated, using wave- and solar-powered deep water pumps, which can reverse the devastation of kelp forests caused by ocean warming.
We need to plant more trees and grow more kelp to help reverse our heading to more devastation.
Reforest not only the land, but even more importantly, reforest the sea.
A “floating open-ocean kelp ecosystem” could be placed in ocean desserts and encourage carbon sequestration and even attract and grow fish. The plan is intended for
large-scale regeneration and open-ocean cultivation of kelp forests [which] will provide food, fuel and fertilizer for the 9 billion humans that are likely to inhabit the planet by 2040, while drawing down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and leaving space on land for all those other uses.
https://www.aquaculturealliance.org/advocate/ocean-permaculture/
Ocean permaculture: Air conditioning for warming seas
Monday, 24 July 2017 By Twilight Greenaway
Can artificial upwelling restore nutrients to surface waters where aquaculture is practiced? Ocean permaculture technology will be trialed in the waters off Woods Hole, Mass., and then shipped to the Indian Ocean island nation of Zanzibar, where it will be used to help bring back red Eucheuma seaweed.
More info at: https://www.aquaculturealliance.org/
Listen to this podcast on the work to cool the ocean: hwcdn.libsyn.com/…
The movie 2040 gives a big nod to Project Drawdown: www.drawdown.org/…
Another wonderful term used at the end of the movie 2040 was the “Re-Generation” (as opposed to the “Me-Generation”). This is the film-maker’s vision for his 4-year-old daughter, thus claiming for her generation to experience the Re-Generation of the world's climate, pulling together the many positive things that are happening now which will help that generation.
The movie 2040 is going to be shown in the US soon. I hope you will get a chance to watch the movie because it has an uplifting message about our future. I don’t consider it unrealistic hopium.
Have a Green holiday everyone