Todays incessant debate over climate change is clearly an argument over solutions costing trillions and who can be made to pay.

The business as usual battle lines are clearly drawn between climate change criers and climate change deniers.

The battlefield is around the trough.

The cost of climate change is staggering and easily can bring one to tears as recent climate change narratives have stated. Tragically there is money to be made in endless argument no matter which side the debaters are on. Legendary America President/General Eisenhower warned of the emergence of self serving government sponsored science growing into an insatiable monster and in doing so foretold of the coming of a ‘climate industrial complex‘ that would be focused as any good capitalist enterprise first and foremost on its on-going funding. Today ‘climate change’ is being gamed like it is part of health, or rather Big Pharma, where only the most expensive treatments are promoted and reported on while the low cost generics or traditional meds are ridiculed so that the public will doubt their efficacy. Heaven forbid if solutions ‘too cheap to meter’ are ever allowed to inexpensively drain the climate crisis trough.

Climate change debate is the best TV commercial fodder and click bait you can watch in front of your kids. (click to read more)

The shared worst nightmare  of the climate industrial complex are climate change solutions too cheap to meter. Yet such ultra low-cost solutions are near to hand and are the worlds greatest hope.

Meanwhile here is what climate change advocates, criers, say is just how big the financial sink-hole we are facing is.

“The world is badly running out of time to deal with man-made climate change – it is now increasingly likely that a catastrophic 2 degree Centigrade (+2C) temperature rise is unavoidable [300.org].  

Thus leading climate scientists and biologists argue that for a safe planet for all people’s and all species we must urgently return to the pre-Industrial Revolution atmospheric CO2 concentration for millions of years of about 300 parts per million CO2 (300 ppm CO2) from the current dangerous and damaging 400 ppm CO2.

However the cost of doing this and reversing damage from GHG pollution can be estimated as a Carbon Debt of $270 trillion (about 3 times the annual world GDP of $85 trillion) that is remorselessly increasing at $10 trillion each year [link].”

The response to these astronomically costly cries is clear in the response of those who deny the problem and cost of solutions.

“Debating the science used to be “all the rage,” said Scott Segal, who represents energy interests at Bracewell & Giuliani. But now, he told the Washington Post, “the key issue is whether proposed regulations cost too much, weaken reliability or are illegal.”

Follow the money

In an odd reality what people most informed in the climate change debate, criers and deniers both, agree on is that the issue is about money and of course the power money confers or infers. It’s no surprise as the problem with money dates back as far as money dates from the expulsion of money changers from ancient temples to todays investigative primary rule of “follow the money.”

But what might happen if someone takes the money out of the equation. That might just be the best thing imaginable or would it?

If you are one of the legions of people today drawing a paycheck from the trough of the insatiable climate change debate any low-cost solution is going to take money out of your paycheck. While any idea that either doesn’t work or requires lots of money to flow, now that’s bread and butter on your crier or denier table. There’s never been any good way to give advice as to the future for those of this ilk. They might have to look for a different job. So far their efforts to ‘kill the messengers of real and practical hope’ have failed.

Solutions & Illusions

OK there are some lower-cost solutions out there that sort of work but they don’t work well enough solve much of the problem and thus threaten the flow of money in the climate change game. In fact they make for some good pocket change to be earned while waiting for the big trillion-dollar pay off. Sure alternative energy is clearly needed so keep building the bird blenders that are today Wind power. Photovoltaics seem like a fine idea and the price to cover your rooftop is plummeting almost as fast as the price of a barrel of West Texas Crude. There are surely even some energy Black Swans likely in flight as the Saudi Oil Minister Al-Nami and Bill Gates have suggested.

At home, keep screwing in those energy-efficient light bulbs, the cost is tiny, barely the price of a cup of coffee in the modern western world. Easy to do, dimly politically correct, and affordable if not accompanied by brilliantly enjoyable colors.

Not to worry if those wonderful “Kodachrome colors” of old are lost you can’t even buy a film camera anymore, but you can still listen to how wonderful it was courtesy of this Paul Simon musical interlude.

There is at least one climate change solution that works powerfully well, immediately, and at an incredible low-cost.

It’s not a single ‘silver bullet’ one shot solution to the entire problem but it can easily manage upwards of half the problem of CO2 and in doing so provide incredible added benefits. It surely qualifies as perhaps the largest single thing that can be done immediately, effectively, and affordably to avert the crisis of both yesterday’s CO2 and tomorrows CO2. And it sure as hell is a solution TOO CHEAP TO METER!

When I presented my ocean pasture replenishment and restoration solution at one of the early climate change carbon market conference in Cologne Germany 7+ years ago I met a man who was one of the principal sponsors of the event. He took me aside for a glass of wine and we had an interesting conversation. He explained to me his dilemma by saying:

“Russ, being French I have lived my life with Jacques Cousteau as my hero and as a result I love the oceans and everything you are doing to restore the oceans to health. But I have to tell you, if even 10% of what you say is true your low cost carbon solutions will destroy our carbon market so I must oppose you.”

The market backed down to just under $100 billion a couple of years ago but it’s growing again.

Here’s the feast Luc was worried about according to the World Bank although the market retracted for several years it’s back on the uptick.

Well, Luc, let me tell you now as it turns out your opposition did indeed offer a difficult challenges to overcome. While your carbon market ran wild counting hundreds of billions in product and derivative sales we took your first torpedo that sunk our first research ship the Weatherbird II. It took a few more years but indeed we have done it and delivered the truth.

I am happy to tell that our work to replenish and restore ocean pastures in the NE Pacific in 2012 has proven in the largest ocean restoration effort ever on this blue planet and it proved to be far better and more effective than in even my wildest dreams those many years ago when we enjoyed our exchange of views and the lovely French red wine.

All it takes is replenishing the missing dust in the wind.

My 2012 ocean pasture restoration project worked so well it brought back record salmon returns To Alaska the very next year (click to read more)

We know now that for the cost of a mere few tens of thousands of dollars of mineral dust a vast region of ocean that was once a thriving ocean pasture but had turned into a blue desert was returned to a condition of health and abundance. The ocean pasture, a key salmon nursery, was expected to provide for a catch of about 50 million Pink salmon in nearby Alaska in 2013 one year after our work began. Instead the catch of Pink salmon in Alaska in 2013 was 226 million, the largest catch in all of history, in perfect timing for our work to deliver results from their vital ocean pasture.

Following that record shattering historic Alaskan catch, utterly unpredicted by fisheries managers I might add,  a second extraordinary and unpredicted historic run of salmon entered the Columbia River and Fraser Rivers one year later, right on schedule this time as the salmon were sockeye.

This ocean pasture work ran up a cost of about $2 million dollars though 99% of that money was spent on the science and data gathering supporting the pasture management of our work as simple Good Shepherds. The size of the pasture bloom was remarkable and the duration of is benefit as a renewed pasture has been long and wonderful. Just this winter another harbinger of the ocean returning to a state of health and abundance is seen in the ‘right on time’ arrival of a miraculous and historic Orca whale baby boom. Clearly the mother Orcas were well nourished and in prime breeding health some 17 months ago, their gestational time, to be giving birth to so many healthy babies this winter and spring.

What’s Next – 100 Pastures

There are 100 ocean pastures around the world in all of the Seven Seas that can and will be similarly replenished and restored. This work will bring back the fish by the billions into the nets and onto the plates of people around the world who rely and need the healthy nourishment that is ocean fish. The cost of the work to restore these 100 ocean pastures will be tiny, perhaps not more than $10 million dollars. So little its not even a rounding error in the trillions being insisted upon and argued over by climate change criers and deniers. No one will become rich by becoming Good shepherds of ocean pastures just as no shepherd has ever become rich caring for pastures and flocks on land. But it is a worthy and honorable task with rewards of incalculable non material value.

In the bargain while our replenished and restored ocean pastures deliver billions of additional fish to feed people, sea birds, salmon, sea lions, and whales they will capture and repurpose our deadly anthropogenic, fossil, CO2 into that ocean life. Many billions of tonnes of CO2 will be repurposed and the cost …. too cheap to meter!

Shepherds Wanted

Jenna, one of our former marine biologist shepherds diving from Weatherbird II while watching over the ocean pasture.

By the way we are just about to begin to hire Good Shepherds to begin taking care of ocean pastures around the world. Stay tuned there will soon by a page here where you might learn more. If you’ve got the right stuff and are willing to serve both Nature and humanity we’ve got a very typical shepherds job for you, low pay, long hours, but close to nature. A word of warning there will be wolves, criers, deniers, banksters, rouges, and carpetbaggers aplenty to beware of and deal with, bring your own shepherds staff.

Ps… Dear Luc and ilk, There’s an old saying in the west that today is more apropos than ever… “Watch my dust!”

Here’s a final reward for reading here.

Remember why the ocean is worth saving