My submission to North-shore-info
Algae can sequester 100 gigatons of CO2 per year: Algae can survive the eco-apocalypse
by Drew Hempel, MA
I've been an environmental activist since the mid-80s when I first read Winona LaDuke's environmental racism activism in the free Northern Sun News, at the Uptown Minneapolis Library. I started my first full time job doing door to door environmental fundraising for Citizens for a Better Environment led by a female attorney activist in Minneapolis. I then went on to do civil disobedience with eight arrests, while organizing campaigns and coalitions and I worked for half a dozen nonprofits out of Twin Cities, Minnesota, while I also earned a master's degree at University of Minnesota. In the midst of all this research in "sustainability" and conservation biology - when we confront the deeper structural issues at hand, the radical rotten root of civilization is removed.
I'm not going to get into abstract philosophy of science but I did finish my master's degree by doing intensive meditation training from a Chinese spiritual yoga master healer - a qigong master who works with Mayo Clinic doctors in Minnesota. This experience taught me that our modern mentality of left-brain dominance is a type of deep mind control. In fact my final paid op-ed column for the University of Minnesota Daily newspaper, back in 2000, was called "Truth Repressed by Psychic Vampires." It seemed extreme at the time and people just kind of dismissed me. hahaha.
So to focus on the solution we can turn to Sir David King, at Cambridge, with his promotion of algae as a deep ocean marine biological restoration project. We can also turn to Raffael Jovine, a double Ph.D. in marine biology, founder of "Brilliant Planet" to sequester carbon via near-ocean algae farms in the desert. These two projects alone could potentially sequester some 40 gigatons of CO2 per year. But that is just the start. The Monterrey Institute research scientists have acknowledged that indeed when the climate gets out of control only algae can save us.
So algae is by far the best "biofuel" for what that's worth but since Exxon could not achieve a competitive market price compared to a barrel of oil then Exxon dropped all their algae research funds. But this is the wrong focus - rather the true benefit of algae is the environmental and ecological "opportunity cost" of not focusing on algae. Let's cut to the chase: Algae has been alive on Earth for 4.6 billion years and some algae exists as "extremophiles" - meaning algae will likely survive the imminent "biological annihilation" (see googlescholar peer-reviewed articles for more on that term).
So we can embrace the algae - as the most efficient and highest technology on Earth due to its reliance on quantum nonlocal negentropic energy extraction (i.e. photosynthesis) - as there are no stems or roots to algae it is therefore pure photosynthesis for carbon sequestration. Or we can ignore algae but the algae will still take over anyway. For example there's a company in Australia now selling "red seaweed" (macroalgae) that reduces the ungulate methane releases by over 80% - as a food supplement. There is a research project in Germany to also grow the macroalgae seaweed to offset all of Germany's carbon emissions.
We know that the oceans have accumulated already close to 500 Zettajoules of extra heat (since 1995) as Jim Massa, the Oceanographer Ph.D. research science in Alaska, has documented. That heat will be releasing back into the atmosphere. But it is the CO2-equivalent emissions that drives the heat absorption in the atmosphere. As Sir David King points out industrialization killed off some 4 million whales that previously fertilized the deep ocean surfaces thereby causing algae blooms that sequestered the carbon. The plan then is to regenerate this algae that will then feed more krill to then bring back the whale populations to then naturally restore that algae carbon sequestration cycle.
Oil and coal originally are from algae and considering how dense an energy source they are then it should not be surprising that growing algae directly can reverse the effects of burning oil and coal. Algae sequestration at coal power plants is starting to be introduced on industrial scale in China already. Spirulina is an excellent algae food source and growing this food then is the best "regenerative agricultural" practice. The algae can be used as fertilizer or animal feed or human food.
The arctic ice has already lost 80% of its volume and in five years it will have lost 100% of its volume - if not sooner. This means by September at ice minimum the Arctic will have lost its "air conditioner" albedo effect and the ocean water will heat up that much faster. There's 1200 gigatons of pressurized methane in the world's largest ocean shelf - the East Siberian Arctic Shelf - and that methane has already been "triggered" to accelerate exponentially into the atmosphere - just a 50 gigaton release would double atmosphere temperatures, thereby causing massive global famine.
Already we have 50 million people in "acute" food insecurity and over 310 million in food insecurity with our "bread baskets" directly threatened by extreme weather. The biomass fires and deforestation and ocean heat are all causing an acceleration of "biological annihilation" but the meltdown of the 450 or so nuclear power plants would then wipe out the ozone layer, causing immediate frying of life on Earth. Fortunately algae in its extremophile locations would survive this eco-apocalypse.
So I say embrace the algae.
