Pope Francis proclaims man has slapped Nature in the face

Here’s my open letter to his eminence. If you like it you might send him a copy and a note, or a prayer, alas he doesn’t have email.

Your Eminence,

Your comments in 2013 and recently have been so clear on the needs of our environment. I hope your flock of 1.2 billion Catholics will take heed. I know your intention is to be a Good Shepherd. This posting I hope will help you and the rest of us do so.

I am again inspired by your most recent comments.

 “As stewards of God’s creation, we are called to make the earth a beautiful garden for the human family. When we destroy our forests, ravage our soil and pollute our seas, we betray that noble calling,”

I look forward to your new encyclical on the environment which you’ve said is almost finished and that you hope will be published in June, ahead of U.N. environment meetings in Paris.

I hope there is time to offer my advice for you to consider. I agree with your sentiments that simply adding more words on behalf of Nature is not enough as you’ve recently been quoted in the press as saying..

“Respect for the environment means more than simply using cleaner products or recycling what we use. These are important aspects, but not enough. We need to see, with the eyes of faith, the beauty of God’s saving plan, the link between the natural environment and the dignity of the human person,”

Becoming Good Shepherds of the Ocean Pastures of this Blue Planet

Toward helping you, my dear Pope Francis, to understand how to become a “Good Shepherd” of Mother Nature I have some practical solutions and experience for you to consider.

You might study on the controversy over fossil fuel CO2 and take note that while the orthodoxy is that CO2’s major role lies within the atmosphere, in certain fact it is far more potent and dangerous to Nature with respect to the harm it causes to our oceans.

Great peril to Nature from our CO2 comes from our first trillion tonne deadly dose, already emitted into the air, that is very slowly dissolving into the oceans that make up 72% of this blue planet. There water+CO2 make acid in the sea. (H2O+CO2→H2CO3 carbonic acid). This ocean acidifying effect has already produced a measured 30% shift (lowering of pH) toward making dangerously acidic seas. Keep in mind that this 30% change is as a result of just a fraction of ‘yesterday’s’ CO2 moving from air to ocean which is a process that is known to take centuries to balance. This means there are many decades of additional decline in ocean pH certain to occur from the CO2 we’ve already spewed into the air.

Decades of global greening resulting from high and rising CO2 documented in satellite data

But even worst news for the oceans is revealed by the observed and measured certain effects of all those hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 creating ‘Global Greening’ as plants on land take up our extra CO2 like a fertilizer. This may be good for land but it has produced a deadly hundred year long drought for the plants of our ocean pastures, the plankton.

If we are to save the ocean pastures we must provide the antidote to our already administered lethal dose of poison that is killing our oceans

More Grass Growing Means Less Dust Blowing

Rain and Dust in the wind are the Yin and Yang for pastures on land and at sea. Click to read more…

Just as the grass on land which grows in mineral soil receives its blessing of rain that allows for sustainable abundance, ocean pastures in which the plankton grass of those pastures grows in water must receive a blessing of dust to thrive and be sustained. In our observed 50 years of ‘global greening’ that greening is seen as such good ground cover that dust in the wind is in dramatic decline and the ocean pastures are suffering under 50 years of vital mineral drought.

As much as this is gloomy news there is hope if we choose, as you have advised us, if we do more than the simple acts. Caring for, restoring, and replenishing ocean pastures is very much within our collective grasp. 25 years and a quarter of a billion dollars of international research culminating in my first large scale ocean pasture restoration in the summer of 2012 has shown the way.

In my work I took a modest size fishing boat (130 ft.) and eleven shipmates out to sea in the NE Pacific with half a boat load of iron mineral dust, just 100 tonnes. The boat ordinarily catches 200 tonnes of fish on a single voyage. We spread the vital mineral dust over a patch of ocean 100×100 kilometers, ocean currents mixed that replenished mineral dust into triple the area 30,000 km2.

Results

The result of this Good Shepherding work, not unlike the work of countless of good shepherds on land, is that the ocean pasture was restored to health and bloomed in historic abundance. Marine life of all sorts came to the thriving abundant pasture which was returned to health. Seabirds by the tens of thousands appeared, great whales counted in pods numbering in the scores of individuals arrived, fish were jumping 300 miles out to sea, and each night the greatest migration of life on earth, the zooplankton, swam up from the abyss each night to feed on the bloom in the safety of darkness.

Record Salmon Returns To Alaska – click to read more

The very next year the Pink salmon of Alaska which were known to use this ocean pasture showed us one result of our good work. Where 52 million Pink salmon were expected to be caught by the fishermen of Alaska that year instead 226 million of these salmon swam into the nets and onto the plates of fishermen and their customers. The largest catch in all of Alaskan history!

I am certain of the success of this work as the results closely follow a natural event when the volcano Kasatochi in Alaska in the summer of 2008 dusted mineral rich ash over the same region. Following that volcanic dusting the ocean bloomed as it did for me. The volcano produced a miracle of 40 million Sockeye that returned to the Fraser river near Vancouver when only a million fish were expected. 40 million salmon can’t be wrong, watch my music video on this.

Over time my replenished and restored ocean pasture has faded in productivity but it has certainly nourished and returned many hundreds of millions of additional nourishing fish into the nets and onto the plates of so many. This pasture like scores of other vital ocean pastures that no longer produce fish and marine life like they did not so many decades ago needs to be taken care of on a regular basis just as any good shepherd knows any pasture requires. That will be our good work for a long time to come as we care for Nature as she cares for us.

This is a lesson about fish that a fisherman of old might smile down upon us for learning.

This solution is impossibly inexpensive and ready immediately what are we waiting for.

The cost of my practicum in becoming a Good Shepherd on behalf of ocean pastures was a pittance. The mineral dust I used today can be bought for just $25,000. My crew and I did a great deal more in the way of terriffic ocean science. One metric of return is seen in the value to the Alaska salmon fishermen in sales as reported by the State of Alaska as being $400 million dollars.

Alaska ocean pasture fed salmon feeds American kids in food aid programs. click to read more…

My work restoring one ocean pasture in the summer of 2012 has had certain and important human results as more than 100 million meals worth of the bounty of pasture fed Alaska salmon has now gone into food aid programs for needy children.

So that we might save our ocean pastures from the deadly effects of our CO2 emissions replenishing and restoring their vital dust is an act to undo our great wrong that we can easily afford. The cost to convert billions of tonnes of CO2 from it’s death dealing form into ocean life and fish is not more than a penny per tonne. In the bargain billions of additional fish will be placed before hungry people who are in great need.

Please help

So dear holy father perhaps you might join with me and together we can work to become and teach others to become Good Shepherds on behalf of the 72% of this blue planet that needs us the most, the ocean pastures. We can pass over those still waters and return them to being green pastures and perhaps in doing so demonstrate our ability to learn a lesson from an ancient fisherman about caring for the fish. It may even restoreth our souls.

The next voyage begins soon.