Save the world!

It seems to me that there is a relatively easy way of solving the threat of global warming and increasing the food supply for the world’s population.

I know it seems too easy to be true but the argument goes as follows:-

Plants need in essence three things to grow

• Water
• Sunlight
• Nutrients

The most productive lands on the planet have all three in abundance

Unproductive land is usually missing at least one component:-

Desert………….water

Rocky land………….nutrients

Northern latitudes………….sunlight/warmth

We know plants are pretty tough – you can find lichens on rocks in the Antarctic!

OK nothing too off the wall so far

70% of this planet is covered in water

Tropical oceans cover vast areas

What do you remember from Blue Planet as narrated by David Attenborough?

Remember the effect El Nino had on the waters surrounding the Galapagos. The warm current associated with this climatic phenomenon meant that life crashed on the islands as this current was nutrient poor. The cold up welling current normally found there brings nutrient rich water to the upper levels of the ocean surrounding the islands with consequent profusion of life.

Remember the phenomenon of the algae bloom affecting northern waters in springtime. There were some cracking shots taken from space showing the phenomenon. A combination of nutrient rich water having been stirred up by winter storms is warmed by increasing levels of sunlight. This is followed by shoals of fish eating the plankton followed by predators eating the fish and so forth.

Tropical seas are great for diving. Not only are they warm-you can see for miles

With water close inshore to the UK you are lucky to get 5M visibility

Why is this- well the main reason is obvious if you have tried to dive in UK waters in spring-Plankton! The bane of divers, reducing visibility dramatically. OK so in tropical waters why no plankton blooms? Well warm water is lighter than cold water having less density. Water near the sea bottom is full of nutrients but does not mix with the warmer surface waters unless special conditions exist e.g. with the Cold Humbolt current running north off the coast of Chile making those waters incredibly productive or as a result of storm action. Apparently in some parts there are phenomena called ocean gyres bringing cold water up from the depths. The sargasso sea is caused by one such.

What about all those areas of tropical seas where the sea bottom is thousands of meters deep and the surface waters are gin clear and no major mixing of surface and deep water takes place. They are the equivalent of deserts with very little life present

We know what can be achieved with deserts- look what the ancient Egyptians did with the Nile running through the Sahara. Basically combining water, nutrients and sunlight to grow crops.

Well in Tropical waters there is obviously plenty of sunlight and water but limited nutrients. In some ways it seems to me a lot easier to increase the fertility of the oceans than providing water to deserts or warmth and sunlight to northern latitudes.

There have been experiments in increasing the fertility of tropical waters. Apparently the ocean south of the Galapagos is called the dead zone because the water there lacks the essential nutrient of Iron. When this was added as an experiment it caused the most colossal plankton bloom. The importance of this really is that :-

• Plankton traps CO2 and when it dies it takes the trapped carbon to the bottom of the sea. In the experiment just quoted it was estimated that hundreds of tons of CO2 was trapped for a few tons of iron
• Perhaps just as importantly plankton is at the bottom of the food chain for life in our seas. Thus increasing the supply of plankton would potentially increase all life in the seas creating more food for people living in tropical areas who also happen to be the poorest on earth
• This increase in fertility was achieved relatively simply
• 
  

It would be pretty simple in theory to increase the fertility of the tropical oceans. Just fill up supertankers with sewage on their way back to the gulf having offloaded their cargo and spread it all about far out to sea. We spread dung all over farmers fields after all

Obviously there are problems with this idea, some plankton blooms are toxic so nutrient levels would have to be carefully controlled

Sea water containing too high a nutrient level are damaging to coral reefs thus would have to be done far offshore in deep water

I am sure there are others…..

Obviously there needs to be more research but surely this is potentially a win win situation-sort global warming and hunger at the same time

Good idea or what?!

I don’t think I am completely mad- we need to move from being the cultural equivalent of a Hunter- Gatherer society when it comes to using our seas and start managing them

We have the power to improve the environment not just ‘conserve’ it

Anyone who has dived on sand knows how little life is there until you come across a stone or anything else that stabilises the bottom where seaweed can grow and small fish can be seen hovering around it…

So what do we do? We scrape chains over the bottom to catch fish and scallops turning the sea bottom into the equivalent of a ploughed field. Do you remember those old Hymns that talk of the bounteous seas –well bounteous no longer and no surprise if we keep to our Hunter Gatherer approach to the sea with the equivalent of Rape and Pillage.

Our civilisation started with farming after all

I would be really interested if any of you out there can shoot me down in flames or come up with more arguments why this idea can’t fly….. or even more positively add your support to hone this idea and then lets get it out there in the public domain and start pressuring

The whole thing seems so obvious so there must be a serious catch you would think but Hey so what- lets be doing something…rather than keep wringing our hands about global warming when we hear the Chinese are building a coal fired power station every week and all those cows in India pumping out methane and Las Vegas lit up like some giant christmas tree. Greenland is about to melt raising sea levels 10’s of meters…. we all now know something has to be done about it but the Kyoto protocol is all about reducing greenhouse gas emissions NOT increasing carbon capture or even finding some way of cooling the planet

Roger

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