Global warming is a huge problem. The implications of global warming are very scary. Scientists predict things like sea levels rising, coastal cities disappearing under water, more extreme weather, droughts, floods and more. There are people all over the world trying to figure out how to stop global warming. Of course, there is the clear solution of ceasing all fossil fuel use, but what's simple on paper is not simple in implementation.
Environmentalists would love if fossil fuel use stopped altogether; it's an idealistic idea to toy with, but it's not practical. If the world immediately stopped using all fossil fuels, it would be catastrophic. Markets would fail, the economy would fail and chaos would ensue. Therefore, people around the world are looking for ways to mitigate global warming without stopping the use of fossil fuels. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since as long as fossil fuel use continues, the effects of global warming will continue. However, that's the solution that's on the table. Sure, millions of people are installing solar panels and wind turbines and many people are innovating new ways of living life greener, but in order to stop global warming, there needs to be a big change. One suggestion is to use the Earth's oceans to store carbon dioxide.
The idea is all about marine snow. Marine snow is a continuous shower of living and dead organic material, as well as some inorganic material, that falls from the upper layers of the ocean's water column down to the bottom. As marine snow falls, many species eat it in abundance and only a small amount of marine snow actually ends up on the ocean's bottom floor.
Marine snow begins in the photic zone, the productive top layer of the ocean's water column. The photic zone begins at the surface of the water and continues to a depth where 1% of the light from the sun is visible, typically about 200 meters or about 650 feet. Marine snow begins here in the photic zone and is a combination of dead or dying animals and plants, fecal matter, sand, soot and other dusts. Every year, plankton float in the photic zone and consume about ten billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere. When they're alive, the plankton produce excretions, which then turn into marine snow. When they die, the plankton's tiny bodies turn into marine snow. Marine snow then takes all of that carbon that the plankton consumed and recycles it into the water in the form of carbon dioxide.
Some experts think that it might be possible to extend the recycling process, which generally only occurs in the photic zone. As the logic goes, if the recycling process could be increased by 24 meters or about 8 ft down into the ocean, it could move 27 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This is because, if scientists can figure out a way to allow more marine snow to fall to the ocean floor without being eaten, it will sequester more carbon dioxide in the water column. When marine snow is eaten, the carbon dioxide is reemitted into the atmosphere within a few months or years. When marine snow stays on the ocean floor, it sequesters the carbon dioxide for tens of thousands of years. The problem, however, is that humans have emitted more than 100 ppm of carbon dioxide in the past 200 years. Using the oceans to mitigate global warming doesn't seem like the most viable option, but it remains an option that scientists will look into. EnviroCitizen.org hopes that other great minds will work together to find the right solution to the issue of global warming. |
