Yesterday's CO2 vs. Tomorrow's CO2

Yesterday’s CO2 vs. Tomorrow’s CO2

While many international leaders work toward emission reduction strategies and carbon capture and storage they are missing the really key core problem. That problem is NOT tomorrows CO2 but YESTERDAYS CO2. We must turn our attention to the monstrous nearly 1000 gigatonne carbon bomb, two centuries of our accumulating CO2. This is still mostly in the air as it takes centuries for airborne CO2 to equilibrate with the rest of the planet.

As that CO2 bomb is absorbed it is mostly doing so by dissolving into the oceans. Many reports are calling the alarm of ocean acidification, adding corrosive acid in our oceans to the raging fires of fossil CO2 global warming. In this world of media, as fed by organizations eager to cash in on the crisis, well any crisis actually but this one is a big one, they produce agonizing after agonizing stories about the futility of it all.

They claim only a massive global reorganization of world government and the turning back of the modern technological society will do. What they seem to think is needed is another dogma ruled dark ages. Naturally what’s missing and attacked at every mention is the simple, best, only, means to fight ocean acidification and CO2 in the air. Joining forces with Mother Nature to provide the cure.

Not even half of yesterdays CO2 has reached the oceans where Revelle’s Rule tells us 80% of CO2 ends up. This means the first carbon bomb made up of yesterdays CO2 will be continuing to explode in the ocean for more than a century even if we stop the emission of new, tomorrow’s CO2, today. No amount alternative energies, recycling, bicycling, or “clean coal” will tend to the already mortifying effects of the first carbon bomb. Sure lets reduce the size of the second bomb but first things first. Here’s how.

ONLY ocean replenishment and restoration can enlist, as allies, the most powerful force of nature – the ocean plants, the bloomin’ plankton. The ocean pastures are becoming deserts.

Walt Whitman once said “All beef is grass.” I say “All fish is plankton.”

But high and rising CO2 in the air is not only responsible for ocean acidification. Far worse, from the oceans point of view, it has fed green plants on land making them greener, bushier, where this makes plants into  “good ground cover.” Ground cover improvements have reduced the amount of dust blowing in the winds by 1/3 in just a few decades. For the oceans dust in the wind brings vital mineral micro-nutrients, that terrestrial Yin (dust) is just as important as rain, the Yang, blowing from sea to land nurturing plant life.

Six years ago reports told of the problem that had been observed and measured since earth and ocean satellites went aloft 30 years ago. Those reports measured decimation of ocean plants, 10% are gone from the Southern Ocean, 17% from the N. Atlantic, 26% from the N. Pacific, and 50% from the tropical seas. A few more decades further into the past, ocean pastures grew more verdant consuming 4-5 billion tonnes more CO2 each year than today. Since in every drop of 10% of ocean plant life we see the loss of their reduction of CO2 being equal to the emissions of all of our fossil fuels it is clear they have the power to do the job.

Today, as stewards of our blue planet, we must replenish ocean mineral micro-nutrients to restore the verdant ocean pastures. If we bring the ocean plankton blooms back to levels seen only 30 years ago those plants will annually convert billions of tonnes of CO2 into ocean life instead of acid ocean death. Those restored ocean pastures will deliver 7 times the CO2 reductions called for by the Kyoto Protocol.

To begin, and we must without delay, the work requires only tens of millions of dollars. To succeed in a matter of a decade to restore the oceans back to a state of health they and we enjoyed a few decades ago requires only a few billion dollars. In the bargain the restored oceans will feed everything from tiny krill to the great whales and everything and everybody in between – fish, seabirds, penguins, seals and us.

Replenish and restore the oceans without delay. The really really good news is that we can, and have, restored large ocean pastures, cheaply, effectively, for the benefit of all. Check out the work of the Ocean Pastures Corporation.