Seaweed
(Image: Shane Stagner)
Seaweed – under construction
Summary
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- Eating the seaweed Asparagopsis reduces up to 80% of methane emissions from cows: 43% of our greenhouse gas emissions are from agriculture and 80% of methane from ruminant farm animals, mostly dairy cows
- Kelp pulls more carbon dioxide out of the air than rainforests ‘drawdown’, grows much faster, ans permanently sequesters it when allowed to drop to the deep ocean floor
- Kelp reduces the acidity of seawater immediately around it. This could resolve problems being faced by mussels and oyster farms as the ocean become more acidic
- As a human food, kelp has more iron than meat.
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Seaweed
Sequestration: ocean permaculture
Soil, forests, seaweed: driven by the sun (ie free) – can grow up to 1m/day. Cut off and left to drift down, carbon is sequestered for millennia as the seaweed grows.
- Doesn’t need fresh weater
- Doesn’t burn down
- Doesn’t need agrichemicals to grow
- Doesn’t need presticides
- Doesn’t use land
- Makes the sea less acid, serving as a nursery for organisms that are particuaarlly vulberable to acificifcation, such as oysters and mussels. https://theecologist.org/2018/mar/27/how-seaweeds-can-help-offset-acidity-our-oceans
- Globally a $6 billio/year business in other countries
Mechanical/chemical: withdraw from the air and convert to biodfuels, plastics etc, punmp deep underground, or convert to rocks (Iceand)
- Policies and international research, agendas have recognised by failed to reduce emissions
- Emissions continue to climb in spite of agreed upon reaserch showing the need to reduce (IPCC)
- Policies to reduce are voluntary; no sanctions or other punative measures against countries that do not agree or fail to meet their promimises (including international agreements made in Paris)
The goal of staying under 1.5C means we can only increase andother 0.3 degrees, as we have already reached 1.2C. - To os thatWe need to cut the amount we re currently emitting to 3Gtones/year every year.
- In fact, we are emitting 4.5Gt/year
While the co-benefits of essential life-supporting ecosystem services, carbon sequestration, and climate change adaptation capabilities of a healthy biodiversity are currently undervalued in the ETS, research is underway to rectify this situation:
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Explainers
Drawdown
To draw excess greenhouse gasses, primarily carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it back underground. See the carbon cycle.