Showing posts with label global warming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label global warming. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

More algae, more problems

http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/news/blog/2012/03/More-algae-more-problems/
March 28, 2012 at 10:20am

More algae, more problems
By Jeremy Moule

Our mild winter could mean a spring and summer where algae blooms are a bigger problem than usual in Lake Ontario and other local waterways.

Last night, Color Brighton Green held a presentation on local water quality issues. Charles Knauf, the department's chief water quality analyst, told the crowd that algae tends to be worse in years where there are no big winter storms to disrupt algae growth.

"I got called out on two algae blooms already, and it's not even April," Knauf said. Both involved inland water bodies.

Traditionally, excessive algae are attributed to nutrient runoff from lawns and fields. However, the mild winter - Lake Ontario, and the Great Lakes in general, barely froze during it - has given algae growth a head start.

In general, algae growth can cause water quality problems, and summertime algae are a particular problem for Monroe County's public beaches. Algae clumps can be breeding grounds for bacteria, and high pathogen counts can lead to beach closings. Algae can also cloud up the water; clarity is also a major factor in whether a beach stays open.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Arctic Methane Emergency Group

Arctic Methane Emergency Group

http://ameg.me/index.php/about-ameg/contributors


Diatoms are acknowledged as a possible solution to Arctic Methane emissions.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Arctic plankton blooms



Shifting spring: Arctic plankton blooming up to 50 days earlier now

A light micrograph shows plankton including water fleas (family Daphniidae).
A light micrograph shows plankton including water fleas (family Daphniidae). (Laguna Design)


Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 7, 2011

Climate researchers have long warned that the Arctic is particularly vulnerable to global warming. The dramatic shrinking of sea ice in areas circling the North Pole highlights those concerns.

A new report finds that the disappearing ice has apparently triggered another dramatic event - one that could disrupt the entire ecosystem of fish, shellfish, birds and marine mammals that thrive in the harsh northern climate.

Each summer, an explosion of tiny ocean-dwelling plants and algae, called phytoplankton, anchors the Arctic food web.

But these vital annual blooms of phytoplankton are now peaking up to 50 days earlier than they did 14 years ago, satellite data show.

"The ice is retreating earlier in the Arctic, and the phytoplankton blooms are also starting earlier," said study leader Mati Kahru, an oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.

Drawing on observations from three American and European climate satellites, Kahru and his international team studied worldwide phytoplankton blooms from 1997 through 2009. The satellites can spot the blooms by their color, as billions of the tiny organisms turn huge swaths of the ocean green for a week or two.

The blooms peaked earlier and earlier in 11 percent of the areas where Kahru's team was able to collect good data. Kahru said the impacted zones cover roughly 1 million square kilometers, including portions of the Foxe Basin and the Baffin Sea, which belong to Canada, and the Kara Sea north of Russia.


"The trend is obvious and significant, and in my mind there is no doubt it is related to the retreat of the ice," said Kahru, who published the work in the journal Global Change Biology.In the late 1990s, phytoplankton blooms in these areas hit their peak in September, only after a summer's worth of relative warmth had melted the edges of the polar ice cap. But by 2009 the blooms' peaks had shifted to early July.

"A 50-day shift is a big shift," said plankton researcher Michael Behrenfeld of Oregon State University, who was not involved in the study. "As the planet warms, the threat is that these changes seen closer to land may spread across the entire Arctic."

Ecologists worry that the early blooms could unravel the region's ecosystem and "lead to crashes of the food web," said William Sydeman, who studies ocean ecology as president of the nonprofit Farallon Institute in Petaluma, Calif.

When phytoplankton explode in population during the blooms, tiny animals called zooplankton - which include krill and other small crustaceans - likewise expand in number as they harvest the phytoplankton. Fish, shellfish and whales feed on the zooplankton, seabirds snatch the fish and shellfish, and polar bears and seals subsist on those species.

The timing of this sequential harvest is programmed into the reproductive cycles of many animals, Sydeman said. "It's all about when food is available." So the disrupted phytoplankton blooms could "have cascading effects up the food web all the way to marine mammals."

But the Arctic food web is poorly studied, and so any resulting decline in fish, seabirds and mammals will be difficult to spot.

As the Arctic Ocean north becomes less and less icy, commercial fisherman have begun eyeing these vast, untapped waters as an adjunct to the famously rich fishing grounds of the subarctic Bering Sea, west of Alaska.

But in 2009, the U.S. body overseeing fishing in the region, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, banned commercial fishing in the Arctic Ocean, citing a lack of knowledge about how many - or even what kind - of fish live there.

"There are no catches authorized because we don't know enough about the fish populations there to set a quota," said Julie Speegle, a spokeswoman for the Alaska office of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Last week, that service reported results from the first fish survey in 30 years of the Beaufort Sea, an arm of the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska. The survey found sizeable populations of several commercially valuable species, including pollock, Pacific cod and snow crab.


Last week, the National Snow and Ice Data Center, in Boulder, Colo., reported that in February, Arctic sea ice covered a smaller area than ever seen in that month, tying with February 2005 as the most ice-free February since satellites began tracking Arctic ice in 1979.How these populations will respond to the ever-earlier plankton blooms is a big unknown, Sydeman said. But other research has shown that northern Atlantic cod populations crash when plankton blooms in that region shift in time.

The annual average Arctic sea ice coverage has decreased about 12 percent since then, a trend that appears to be accelerating, said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the center. Summer ice coverage has declined even more dramatically, he said, with the Arctic losing almost a third of its late-summer ice over the past 30 years.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Agriculture is responsible for one third of Antropogenic GHG emissions


Impact Investing in Sustainable Agriculture for a New Economy

Dec. 22 2010 - 1:52 pm | 1,051 views | 1 recommendation | 6 comments

According to a recent article from Scientific American, agriculture is responsible for one third of global greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. Agribusiness farming operations are notorious for nitrogen and phosphorus runoff (particularly from poultry and hog farms). In the Chesapeake Bay region, for example, one study estimated the price tag for restoring the bay at $19 billion, of which $11 billion would go toward “nutrient reduction.”

There are more than 400 such dead zones throughout the world. Additionally, heavily subsidized corn and soy feed to livestock contribute to massive deforestation in the developing world. Tufts University researchers estimate that in the United States alone, between 1997 and 2005 the industrial animal sector saved more than $35 billion as a result of federal farm subsidies that lowered the price of the feed they purchased. These statistics demonstrate both the complexity of the supply chain from feed farm to table, and illustrate the importance of sustainability in the American food production industry.

A sustainable alternative to the beef factory-farming model follows in the footsteps of conservationist pioneer Allan Savory. The recent winner of the prestigious Buckminster Fuller Prize, Savory developed the Holistic Management grazing technique during his time as a researcher and farmer in Southern Africa in the 1980s. By getting grazing cattle to stay in larger, tight herds, Savory was able to restore grassland vitality and increase grass biodiversity. Deep chewing of plant roots, paired with the repeated soil chipping of hooves, caused dormant seeds to germinate and water to penetrate below the surface. According to Shannon Horst, CEO and co-founder of the Savory Institute, ranchers can consistently double, and even quadruple livestock capacity over time. (See an article in TIMEfor more on the Savory grazing technique).

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Savory’s work has been its appeal to both profit-driven investors and international development agencies like USAID as a tool to combat desertification in rural farming communities. Since 2005, USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance has provided more than $1.1 million to support Savory’s African Centre for Holistic Management’s program to restore degraded land, revive water sources, mitigate the effects of global climate change, and increase crop yields. Savory and Horst have worked with range managers on ranches and community group ranches, demonstrating how to manage holistically in communal and private range lands, in partnership with USAID.

Within the past couple of years, for-profit enterprises like Grasslands, LLC are successfully implementing the Savory Holistic Management methodology. Grasslands owns and manages 14,000 acres in South Dakota, and is funded by a network of private impact investors likeArmonia, LLC and Capital Institute founder John Fullerton. The profitability of the Grasslands structure comes from ranching fees per head of cattle, and is based directly on the Savory Institute business model. By investing in companies like Grasslands, Fullterton and other impact investors are laying the foundation for new finance-based theories, tools, and metrics to serve the needs of a sustainable economic system.

In addition to increased yields of beef per acre, the Grasslands model also creates an opportunity to commoditize sequestered carbon for carbon credit trading. Steven Apfelbaum, Founder/Chairman of Applied Ecological Services, Inc., explained to TIME, ”healthy grasslands represents the ecosystem with the highest potential for carbon sequestration of any on the planet.” Ranches like those owned by Grasslands cover an estimated 30 million acres in North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa—and nearly half of the earth’s land mass. Given the shear vastness of the earth’s grasslands, holistic management and reclamation projects hold huge implications for changing the planet.

While Grasslands only just completed its first year in operation, rancher Jim Howell reports that the two South Dakota ranches are expected to double in value and in productivity over a ten-year period and to yield annual dividends on the order of 4% to 5% in the early years, increasing to 10% to 11%. In a recent Capital Institute article, Fullerton expressed his confidence that the Grasslands model can provide a profitable, scalable model for biodiversity recovery: “We have a case study here of true wealth creation in Grasslands,” he says. “We are building biodiversity, soil fertility, sequestering carbon, and generating financial returns. And if my belief of what will happen to ecosystem services plays out, we will make a lot more money with these assets than with most financial assets.”

For more on Grasslands and the Capital Institute’s sustainable investment agenda

Friday, April 16, 2010

Global Warming ; SRM ; Ocean Fertilization, etc

Pages 42-47 THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007

Risky Gamble

Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases may be well intentioned and even
helpful. But as the sole strategy for climate change control it is nevertheless
inflexible, expensive, risky, and politically unrealistic, according to this government economist. Such a strategy could even make matters worse.
Fortunately, there is a better solution.

ALAN CARLI N

Alan Carlin is a Senior Economist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The views expressed in this article are his own and should not be taken to represent official U.S. policy.


"Fortunately, recent research illustrates that nature has worked out an efficient system for removing carbon dioxide from the seas: fertilizing ocean plankton to stimulate them to absorb carbon dioxide (much as plants do) and transport it to the sea floor. Humans have not yet figured out a very efficient way to emulate nature in this regard — seeding the ocean with iron particles has been suggested — but ocean fertilization may be the best current hope, whether under either the ERD or the SRM approach. Given the magnitude of the threat, research on and implementation of geoengineering or other solutions to ocean acidification also needs to become a top priority."

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Geoengineering

There is a very good Google group on Geoengineering - http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering


Discussions regarding proposals to reverse some of the climate effects of greenhouse gas emissions by means of direct intervention in the climate system (for example, by engineering a reduction in the amount of sunlight absorbed by the Earth).

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This "Geoengineering" group (http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering) is designed to meet the needs of citizens who would like to discuss intentional intervention in the climate system. Discussions should touch on intentional modification of climate but may range more broadly.

There is a complementary group called "Climate Intervention" (http://groups.google.com/group/climateintervention) that is designed to meet the needs of working professionals in academia, research laboratories, and the policy world.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

World must cut CO2 to India levels - David King, UK

http://renewenergy.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/world-must-cut-co2-to-india-levels-top-scientist/

World must cut CO2 to India levels: top scientist

2008-05-29 by renewenergy

Rich nations need to cut per-capita greenhouse gas emissions to India’s current levels by mid-century to avoid devastating climate change, Britain’s former chief scientific adviser said on Wednesday.

Global carbon dioxide (CO2) levels from burning fossil fuels were already rising quickly and rich nations needed to quickly figure out how to maintain economic growth while committing to deep cuts in emissions, said David King.

“If you (don’t want) run-away climate change, you need to be at about 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 … We’re currently at 387 ppm CO2, going up at 2 per annum,” said King, director at Oxford University’s Smith School of Enterprise and Environment.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most common greenhouse gas, and atmospheric levels are sometimes measured as CO2 in parts per million. Collectively, all greenhouse gases can also be expressed as CO2 equivalent (CO2e).

King said that maintaining atmospheric CO2 levels at 450 ppm risked a 20 percent chance of global temperatures rising nearly 4 degrees Celsius.

“If you include all greenhouse gases, we’re at around 420 ppm CO2e,” he said, speaking at a climate change workshop hosted by Thomson Reuters in London.

He said Europe needed to reduce its annual per-capita emissions by 80 percent, or from 11 tons of CO2e, to India’s current level of 2.2 tons per person by 2050.

The United States, emitting an average of 27 tons of CO2e per person every year, also needs to fall to these levels if the world is to avoid a dramatic rise in temperatures, he said.

“I think that encapsulates the challenge, to move from where we are now to where the Indians are today, while growing the global economy at the same time,” said King.

RISKING DISASTER

Failure to do so courted environmental disaster, he said, explaining that melting Arctic sea ice heated up the ocean in the far north much faster because ice reflects a large portion of the sun’s radiation, while open ocean absorbs the sun’s heat.

A rise of several degrees Celsius could also mean the Amazon rainforest drying out, turning it into a big source of carbon dioxide emissions rather than a vast sink for the gas as it is now.

The first round of the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol, which seeks to cut greenhouse gas emissions from 37 industrialized nations, expires in 2012 and governments are scrambling to agree a successor agreement by the end of 2009 at a U.N. meeting in Copenhagen.

If governments fail to reach consensus, King thinks another solution to climate change might be so-called geo-engineering, which uses technology to deliberately modify the environment and to promote human habitability.

“We need to remove the carbon dioxide, I suspect not from the atmosphere because it’s too expensive … but possibly from the oceans as they are acidifying,” King said.

Oceans absorb large amounts of CO2 but increasing levels of the gas in the atmosphere is causing oceans to become more acidic, threatening the food chain and marine ecosystems such as coral reefs.

Making geo-engineering profitable for the private sector by establishing a market price for carbon dioxide might promote research and development in the new technology.

“I haven’t worked out what the price of carbon dioxide would have to be to encourage companies to start pumping it out of the oceans, but that is the way we need to move forward.”

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Nualgi and Diatom Algae can remove CO2 from the Oceans very easily and economically

Friday, October 23, 2009

Dead Zones contribute to Nitrous Oxide

'Dead-zone' microbe measures ocean health

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/10/22/tech-climate-ocean-dead-zone-microbe.html

"Specifically, SUP05 removes toxic sulphides from the water and fixes carbon dioxide, but we also think it's producing nitrous oxide, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than either carbon dioxide or methane," Hallam said.

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there are over 400 dead zones in all the oceans of the world.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Nitrogen Cycle: Key Ingredient In Climate Model Refines Global Predictions

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091009204032.htm

To date, climate models ignored the nutrient requirements for new vegetation growth, assuming that all plants on earth had access to as much "plant food" as they needed. But by taking the natural demand for nutrients into account, the authors have shown that the stimulation of plant growth over the coming century may be two to three times smaller than previously predicted. Since less growth implies less CO2 absorbed by vegetation, the CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are expected to increase.

However, this reduction in growth is partially offset by another effect on the nitrogen cycle: an increase in the availability of nutrients resulting from an accelerated rate of decomposition – the rotting of dead plants and other organic matter – that occurs with a rise in temperature.


Combining these two effects, the authors discovered that the increased availability of nutrients from more rapid decomposition did not counterbalance the reduced level of plant growth calculated by natural nutrient limitations; therefore less new growth and higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations are expected.

http://www.greencitizens.net/blogs/1article.php?b_id=8528907504

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This is precisely the problem that Nualgi and Diatoms can tackle very well, by increasing growth of Diatom Algae in any waterbody.

This will take up the excess nutrients and will also capture CO2 and prevent water pollution due to decomposition of plant matter in water and from harmful algal blooms.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Maldives ministers to hold underwater cabinet meeting

http://www.greencitizens.net/news/article.php?n_id=9273831084

Maldives ministers to hold underwater cabinet meeting

Posted by sukhmeet on 2009-10-08 00:37:29

The Maldives government is to hold a meeting under water to highlight the perceived threat of global warming and rising sea-levels. The president of the Maldives is desperate for the world to know how seriously his government takes the threat of climate change and rising sea levels to the survival of his country.

The country, a collection of atolls and islands in the Indian Ocean, stands less than two metres above sea level, and as climate change causes seas to rise it will probably be the first nation to sink beneath the waves.

Mohamed Nasheed has organised an underwater cabinet meeting and told all his ministers to get in training for the sub-aqua session.

Six metres beneath the surface, 14 ministers will ratify a treaty calling on other countries to cut greenhouse emissions on 17th October.

Since taking office last year, President Mohammed Nasheed has emerged as an important international voice on the impact of climate change amid fears that rising ocean levels could swamp this Indian Ocean archipelago within a century.

He has announced plans for a fund to buy a new homeland for his people if the Maldives' 1,192 low-lying coral islands are submerged. He also has promised to make the Maldives, with a population of 350,000, the world's first carbon-neutral nation within a decade.

The leader of a nation made up of 1,200 atolls, 80 per cent of which are no more than a metre above sea level, he has also established a fund to seek an alternative homeland, possibly in Sri Lanka, India or Australia for its 330,000 citizens.

In 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that a rise in sea levels of between 18 and 59 centimetres by 2100 would be enough to make the Maldives virtually uninhabitable.

At the meeting, the Cabinet plans to sign a document calling on all countries to cut carbon emissions ahead of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

The effect of global warming on eutrophication in lakes

http://www.environmental-expert.com/resultEachPressRelease.aspx?cid=8819&codi=59041&lr=1

The effect of global warming on eutrophication in lakes
Source: European Commission, Environment DG
Jul. 24, 2009

Shallow lakes are an important type of ecosystem that may be vulnerable to current warming trends. A recent study examines just how vulnerable they are. It indicates that climate change combined with nutrient pollution could exacerbate eutrophication and suggests nitrogen levels should be monitored.

The researchers used 48 tanks in north-western England which simulated shallow lake communities. They studied the effects of warming by 4°C (which is the high emission scenario for the temperature increase during a hundred years period) and the effects of two levels of nutrient loading relevant to current degrees of eutrophication.

Levels of nutrients, oxygen and pH, as well as phytoplankton, fish and plants, were also studied. During the experiment the highest temperatures at noon reached 21°C in unheated shallow lakes and 25°C in heated lakes. They did not drop below about 3°C in either.

The study demonstrated that warming increased the concentration of soluble phosphate in the water. It also increased total plant biomass, but surprisingly reduced the amount of phytoplankton. The fall in phytoplankton is thought to be caused by shading from increased floating plants, which may be linked to a warming-induced release of soluble phosphate from the sediment. Warming also reduced fish biomass, probably the result of oxygen stress. Perhaps more importantly, high nitrogen loading as well as warming reduced the number of plant species.

Although temperature rises alone are unlikely to cause a switch in water conditions, they could intensify signs of eutrophication in shallow lakes. For example, increased temperature together with increased nutrient loading may cause nuisance growths of floating plants which may affect biodiversity.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

LinkedIn post comment

This is a comment on the post about Nualgi on LinkedIn.
http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers&discussionID=2052335&gid=121439&commentID=2331270&trk=view_disc

Group: OUT OF THE BOX THINKERS

Subject: New comment (#1) on "Nualgi - Diatom Algae - Oxygen"

"This is the sort of new thinking we need to dig us out of this recession. We need to divert redundant resources into building new industries which replenish rather than poison the planet.

This could be a component of a larger scheme:

1. Instead of causing landfill sites to overflow, compost organic waste without air – to produce bio-gas (fuel) and fertiliser to put back on the land

2. Add local algae for more compost

3. Add sea minerals for richer land and immunity to even cancer

4. Do this, using marine algae, from the desert coasts to reclaim 75% of the world’s land to make all the world needs.

This will solve the fuel, food, nutrition & waste crisis in one go, taking excess carbon out of the air to reverse climate change, and enabling us to grow our economy working with Nature, rather than plundering or poisoning it."

Posted by Greg Peachey

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Nualgi - video of a lake in Hyderabad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va5rP1lLoiE

The video of the impact of the use of Nualgi on a lake in Hyderabad is available on You Tube.

This clearly shows the oxygen bubbling up, due to the bloom of Diatom Algae.

The Blue Green Algae crashed out in a couple of hours.
The lake is visibly dirtier after 2 hours, this is part of the cleaning up process.

The organic matter that had settled down on the lake bed over many years, becomes loose and floats up.

Thus the lake is fully cleaned up from the bed upwards.

The oxygen bubbling is visible for over 2 weeks.

This would be visible only in heavily polluted lakes and not in lightly polluted lakes, since the Diatom bloom would be more when more nutrients are available in the water.

The dissolved oxygen level raises steadily over a few days.

The Diatoms are consumed by Zooplankton and these by fish, so there is no residue.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Dwindling fish catches

http://www.hindu.com/2009/03/11/stories/2009031154321000.htm

Dwindling catches

Ocean temperature is one of the primary environmental factors that determine the geographic range of a species. A paper published recently in the journal Fish and Fisheries has used computer modelling to project the global impact of climate change on biodiversity with reference to 1,000-odd fish species. The study has shown that the only way for the tropical fish, with their inability to regulate their body temperature, to survive in warming oceans would be to migrate to cooler waters at higher latitudes. The warming of the oceans would affect the sub-polar species differently. A two-to-four-fold limit to temperature tolerance compared to tropical species and a very limited species diversity would have a big impact in the polar regions. Local extinctions in the sub-polar, tropical, and semi-enclosed regions as well as migration of species to cooler latitudes would affect nearly 60 per cent of present fish biodiversity. Such a mass-scale disturbance is very likely to disrupt the marine ecosystem. Though warming oceans would affect fish whether they live at the surface level or at depths, the shift to an extent of 600-odd km would be seen in the case of surface-living species.

Local extinctions in the tropics will have a great effect on food security of developing countries. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the direct impact of climate change on fisheries would be more pronounced in the developing and least developed countries where about 42 million people work directly in the sector. Two-thirds of the most vulnerable countries are in tropical Africa. It is a fact that reliance on fish protein is directly related to the level of development. In the developing countries, 2.8 billion people depend on fish products for 20 per cent of animal protein. The only way to reduce the magnitude of the impact is to take urgent measures to check the current trend of carbon pollution and limit the average global temperature rise to 2 degrees C by 2100, as against the anticipated 6 degrees. Dwindling fish catch will be one of the many adverse consequences of uncontrolled global warming. Several studies published since the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change’s 4th Assessment Report show that carbon emissions are rising faster than expected, and worldwide action to bring them down brooks no delay.

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Nualgi can increase fish yield and help absorb large amounts of CO2

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Where is the missing carbon?

More fish can mean more carbon capture.
Please see the following article.

http://www.terrapass.com/blog/posts/fish-guts-carbon-sink?

Where is the missing carbon?
Tim Varga | February 17, 2009
Research suggests that a lot of it may wind up inside fish


A giant hole in the global carbon budget may be plugged by an unlikely source: fish guts.

A large proportion of manmade CO2 emissions drain back out of the atmosphere into various carbon sinks. Scientists have long known that approximately half the CO2 flux from the atmosphere goes to land-based sinks and half to the ocean. The problem is that the math hasn’t quite added up.

Terrestrial sinks like forests and savannas, in addition to the long-term storage in soils, are relatively well quantified. Primary absorption in the oceans, too, has been fairly well described: satellite imagery of the open ocean has been used to map and calculate the amount of primary absorption across 70% of the earth’s surface.

Still, the numbers contain a substantial gap. Since the terrestrial sinks are comparatively better understood, and the CO2 in the atmosphere has to go somewhere, most scientists assumed that it was somehow ending up in the ocean. But where?

Almost twenty years ago, researchers at the University of Miami discovered that a species of toadfish carries tiny balls of calcite (CaCO3) in its gut. The authors suggested that this was likely a result of a filtration system in the fish’s stomach: water breathed in and out by the fish would need to be cleaned of various salts, including calcium and magnesium, to maintain proper salinity. These salts combine with carbon in seawater to form carbonates, which precipitate and collect in the fish’s gut.

It turns out that toadfish aren’t unique. All bony fishes have this feature. A new study calculates that these tiny calcite stones could be a missing sink that accounts for 3-15% of the oceanic carbon absorption. That’s a big hole to plug, and the study’s figures are conservative. The actual number could be significantly higher.

This provides another reason to be concerned with declining fish stocks worldwide. In addition to missing out on your favorite tuna sandwich, the global fisheries collapse could end a vital sink for atmospheric carbon.

* * * * * *

Use of Nualgi will result in more fish.
So it could contribute substantially to reducing global warming.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Nualgi - schematic explaining the process





Nualgi closes both the Food - Sewage - Food cycle and O2 - CO2 - O2 cycle.
Thus its the most sustainable solution to both air pollution and water pollution.