Radical ocean solution for climate change

Writing in the journal Nature, Science Museum head Chris Rapley and Gaia theorist James Lovelock have suggested boosting ocean take-up of CO2 using huge flotillas of vertical pipes in tropical seas, a technology already being investigated by a US firm, Atmocean. The pipes use convection currents to bring cold water nearer the surface. The colder water contains more life and can in principle absorb more carbon. For example, the tubes might promote salp, a tiny tube which excretes carbon in its solid faecal pellets which descend to the ocean floor, perhaps storing the carbon away for millennia. Though research is in its early phase, Atmocean CEO Phil Kithil has calculated that deploying about 134 million pipes could potentially sequester about one-third of the carbon dioxide produced by human activities each year.

This is another radical solution proposed by Jame Lovelock underlining the seriousness of his concern that human activity has already damaged the biosphere beyond repair. He has also suggested nuclear power simply because it produces energy without releasing CO2, despite the acknowledgement that it is polluting, requires very long commissioning lead times and is uneconomical. The real solution – humans changing their behaviour – seems unattainable.

One thought on “Radical ocean solution for climate change

  1. When I read this solution, I had 2 opposing reactions. 1: what a clever use of technology to sequester carbon at the bottom of the sea. 2: what a disgusting picture in my mind of 134 million tubes that humans had to put in the ocean to “clean up” their mess. This leads to the question: will the pipes themselves degrade? How long will they last? What becomes of the pipes at the end of their life cycle? (There may be no landfill space by then! Bottom of the ocean? Outer space?)

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