Feed aggregator

Climate change is set to increase the amount of ground-level ozone and fine particle pollution we breathe, which leads to lung disease, heart conditions, and stroke. Less rain and more heat means this pollution will stay in the air for longer, creating more health problems.

Our research, published in Nature Climate Change, found that if climate change continues unabated, it will cause about 60,000 extra deaths globally each year by 2030, and 260,000 deaths annually by 2100, as a result of the impact of these changes on pollution.

This is the most comprehensive study to date on the effects of climate change on global air quality and health. Researchers from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan and New Zealand between them used nine different global chemistry-climate models.

Most models showed an increase in likely deaths – the clearest signal yet of the harm climate change will do to air quality and human health, adding to the millions of people who die from air pollution every year.

Read more: Can we blame climate change for thunderstorm asthma?

Stagnant air

Climate change fundamentally alters the air currents that move pollution across continents and between the lower and higher layers of the atmosphere. This means that where air becomes more stagnant in a future climate, pollution stays near the ground in higher concentrations.

Ground-level ozone is created when chemical pollution (such as emissions from cars or manufacturing plants) reacts in the presence of sunlight. As climate change makes an area warmer and drier, it will produce more ozone.

Fine particles are a mixture of small solids and liquid droplets suspended in air. Examples include black carbon, organic carbon, soot, smoke and dust. These fine particles, which are known to cause lung diseases, are emitted from industry, transport and residential sources. Less rain means that fine particles stay in the air for longer.

While fine particles and ozone both occur naturally, human activity has increased them substantially.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has used four different future climate scenarios, representing optimistic to pessimistic levels of emissions reduction.

In a previous study, we modelled air pollution-related deaths between 2000 and 2100 based on the most pessimistic of these scenarios. This assumes large population growth, modest improvements in emissions-reducing technology, and ineffectual climate change policy.

That earlier study found that while global deaths related to ozone increase in the future, those related to fine particles decrease markedly under this scenario.

Emissions will likely lead to deaths

In our new study, we isolated the effects of climate change on global air pollution, by using emissions from the year 2000 together with simulations of climate for 2030 and 2100.

The projected air pollutant changes due to climate change were then used in a health risk assessment model. That model takes into account population growth, how susceptible a population is to health issues and how that might change over time, and the mortality risk from respiratory and heart diseases and lung cancer.

In simulations with our nine chemistry-climate models, we found that climate change caused 14% of the projected increase in ozone-related mortality by 2100, and offset the projected decrease in deaths related to fine particles by 16%.

Our models show that premature deaths increase in all regions due to climate change, except in Africa, and are greatest in India and East Asia.

Using multiple models makes the results more robust than using a single model. There is some spread of results amongst the nine models used here, with a few models estimating that climate change may decrease air pollution-related deaths. This highlights that results from any study using a single model should be interpreted with caution.

Australia and New Zealand are both relatively unpolluted compared with countries in the Northern Hemisphere. Therefore, both ozone and fine particle pollution currently cause relatively few deaths in both countries. However, we found that under climate change the risk will likely increase.

This paper highlights that climate change will increase human mortality through changes in air pollution. These health impacts add to others that climate change will also cause, including from heat stress, severe storms and the spread of infectious diseases. By impacting air quality, climate change will likely offset the benefits of other measures to improve air quality.

Guang Zeng receives funding from the New Zealand Government's Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) through their Strategic Science Investment Fund.

Jason West receives funding from the US Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Petrochemical billionaires Charles and David Koch, who have underwritten attacks on climate science, have launched a series of videos attacking electric vehicles.

Energy storage projects may bring the cost per kWh of a lithium-ion battery down from $10,000/kWh in the early 1990’s to $100/kWh in 2019, according to a new study.

Policy Exchange says EU agricultural policy should be replaced by system that makes imported meat cheaper for consumers

Britain should abandon tariffs on American and Argentinian meat products after Brexit to bring consumer food prices down, according to a leading rightwing thinktank.

Policy Exchange said the UK should phase out tariffs on agricultural products, saying they raise prices and complicate trade deals, although critics say that would pave the way for hormone-treated beef or chlorine-washed chickens, currently banned under EU law, to reach British supermarket shelves.

Continue reading...

The local water board apologises for 'causing alarm' with discharge from sewage tank maintenance.

Last week, egg producer Snowdale Holdings was penalised A$1 million for falsely labelling their eggs as free-range. Snowdale, one of the biggest producers in the Australian market, owns brands including Eggs by Ellah, Swan Valley Free Range, and Wanneroo Free Range.

Given the significantly higher prices generally charged for free-range eggs, you could be forgiven for having doubts over what you’re getting in the supermarket. Even when egg cartons are legally accurate, the government definition of “free range” might not mean what you think it does.

But you don’t need to shop blind: there are a range of resources that can help you find egg producers that follow best-practise standards, avoid farming practices that concern you and understand what government guidelines really mean.

Read more: the reason people buy free-range eggs (other than animal welfare)

What’s in an egg label?

Previous research has shown that people buy free-range eggs for a range of reasons, including taste and quality, as well as concern for animal welfare.

But unlike other labels such as nutritional information panels or best-before dates, the “free-range” claim is not regulated by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ). In fact, no claims about production methods are subject to this kind of regulation. Food labelling regulation by FSANZ is about what a food contains, rather than how it is produced.

Eggs by Ellah, owned by Snowdale Holdings. Alpha/Flickr, CC BY-NC

However, there is an Australian definition of “free-range”, created in March 2016 under Australian consumer law. Essentially, it means that the chickens have “meaningful and regular access to the outdoors” and that outdoor stocking densities are no more than 10,000 birds per hectare.

This has been hotly debated, with animal welfare and consumer groups arguing that this is not what most people would consider free-range, while producer groups have supported the standard.

The new regulations also requires producers to “prominently disclose” the outdoor stocking density, and we are now starting to see that on packaging.

What does free-range really mean?

In practice, stocking chooks at 10,000 per hectare and giving them regular access to the outdoors, might not result in animals that are especially free (or “cruelty-free” – another claim showing up on an increasing number of egg cartons).

Read more: free-range egg labelling scrambles the message for consumers

For a start, CSIRO has published a code of practice for animal welfare that recommends farmers should have no more than 1,500 birds per hectare. If you want to buy from producers that meet that standard, the consumer group Choice has an app called CluckAR that can scan egg cartons in the store and give immediate feedback on the brand’s farming conditions.

Choice also provides a table of free-range egg producers. Reading that table – and from my own discussions with Australian egg producers – it’s clear that price is not a totally reliable indicator of stocking density.

However, stocking density is only one factor in how hens are treated. Some independent certifications have more stringent guidelines. The Australian Certified Organic Standard, as well as specifying a maximum of 1,500 birds per hectare for set stocking systems and 2,500 for rotational systems, also prohibits practices like withholding feed and water to induce moulting.

The Australian Organic certification indicates a lower stocking density, and more stringent cruelty-free practises, than the government definition of ‘free range’. Australian Certified Organic

Hens naturally moult in autumn, when they lose significant body weight and stop laying eggs while their reproductive tract rejuvenates. For greater control over when hens produce eggs, as well as extending their hens’ laying lives, farmers can induce moulting by reducing their feed, or withholding food altogether for certain periods. Although heavily regulated at the state level in Australia (hens may not go without food entirely for more than 24 hours), it is considered cruel by animal welfare groups.

Similarly Humane Choice recommends a maximum of 1,500 birds per hectare. And unlike the government definition of free-range, which calls for “meaningful and regular” access to the outside, Humane Choice standards specify that hens can “forage on the land, move untethered and uncaged”.

Of course, it is important to note that free-range farms are not free of animal welfare issues, such as feather pecking, where hens pull out the feathers of other birds. There are further challenges is managing exposure to weather or predators to consider. Caged-egg producers argue that consumers should be able to choose from a range of production methods.

However, if animal welfare, sustainability, and labelling are things that you are concerned about, then do your own research and identify the products that align with your values. Don’t rely on a label to tell you what is ethical.

Heather Bray's salary is partly funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage Project (LP130100419) which includes contributions from industry partners Coles Group Ltd, Elders Limited, Richard Gunner’s Fine Meats Pty Ltd, and the South Australian Research and Development Institute. She is currently undertaking consultancy work for Animal Health Australia. She received scholarships from the Pig Research and Development Corporation (now Australian Pork Limited) between 1991 and 1997. The University of Adelaide is a partner in the Animal Welfare Science Centre.

Rising temperatures and the resultant stress on India’s agricultural sector may have contributed to increase in suicides over the past 30 years, research shows

Climate change may have contributed to the suicides of nearly 60,000 Indian farmers and farm workers over the past three decades, according to new research that examines the toll rising temperatures are already taking on vulnerable societies.

Illustrating the extreme sensitivity of the Indian agricultural industry to spikes in temperature, the study from the University of California, Berkeley, found an increase of just 1C on an average day during the growing season was associated with 67 more suicides.

Continue reading...

Bob Dinn urges councils and mayors regulate private landlords’ restrictions on access and use of space

The contradictions of Friedrich Engels’ newly installed statue looking down on the private “public” space of Tony Wilson Place would not have escaped the young man living in 1840s Manchester. Privatisation of public land by stealth (The insidious creep of London’s pseudo-public land, 24 July) is subtly altering access to the city and its amenities. Ambiguous road markings and street signs confuse the public, maximising the landowners’ profits and discriminating against people with disabilities. Close to Engels’ statue a penalty notice was issued for using a blue badge on a street without road markings – notices on building hoardings apparently overruled the absence of yellow lines and the rights of the disabled. In Spinningfields £100 penalties are threatened for stopping cars anywhere, without defining what constitutes “stopping”. Local councils and elected mayors must move quickly to enforce the same regulations on private space as those in public space, make private landowners accountable, end discriminatory practices and be fully open about changing land ownership.
Bob Dinn
Manchester

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

Continue reading...

Summer is the peak season for attacks by the UK’s only venomous snake, the common European adder. We asked a toxicology expert for the dos and don’ts

As any six-year-old will tell you, there is only one venomous snake native to Britain: Vipera berus, AKA the common European adder. Still, it can give you a nasty bite, and doctors have warned that bite victims are walking into a world of pain by not getting help soon enough.

“I’m astonished by the number of people who know they’ve been bitten but just go home,” says Michael Eddleston, a professor of clinical toxicology at the University of Edinburgh and a snake expert. “Then they wake up with massive swelling, when treatment is far less effective.”

Continue reading...

Researchers find that economic, emissions and population trends point to very small chance Earth will avoid warming more than 2C by century’s end

There is only a 5% chance that the Earth will avoid warming by at least 2C come the end of the century, according to new research that paints a sobering picture of the international effort to stem dangerous climate change.

Related: Bill Nye: 'You can shoot the messenger but climate is still changing'

Continue reading...

2017 is behind only El Niño-amplified 2016.

With the first six months of 2017 in the books, average global surface temperatures so far this year are 0.94°C above the 1950–1980 average, according to NASA. That makes 2017 the second-hottest first six calendar months on record, behind only 2016.

That’s remarkable because 2017 hasn’t had the warming influence of an El Niño event. El Niños bring warm ocean water to the surface, temporarily causing average global surface temperatures to rise. 2016 – including the first six months of the year – was influenced by one of the strongest El Niño events on record.

Continue reading...

Death rates of hares native to Highlands are not monitored and animals are widely persecuted for sport, OneKind says

Unregulated culling of Scotland’s mountain hares should be banned and the species protected, according to a report that says shooting the animals for sport is inhumane and uncontrolled.

Landowners can shoot the hares without a licence from August to February and claim culls are necessary to protect game, especially red grouse, from disease.

Continue reading...

The conservation sector is dominated by white faces, and for many people it looks a bit like colonialism. It’s time for new voices to take up the fight

In a few days it will be the 18th anniversary of the death of Michael Werikhe, the enigmatic African conservationist. You don’t hear or read much of him these days.

Nicknamed “the Rhino Man” because his work and campaigns focused on the critically endangered black rhino, Werikhe’s main campaign tactic of choice was walking to raise awareness. His first walk, starting on Christmas Day 1982, took him from Mombasa to the Kenyan capital Nairobi – a distance of 484 kilometres – and lasted for 27 days. He later walked in East Africa, Europe and North America to raise awareness and money, raising nearly $1m and covering nearly 5,000km.

Continue reading...

Cycling can be a huge part of the fight to tackle city air pollution. Tim Burns of Sustrans explains how their Active Travel Toolbox can help us get there

The government’s air quality plan may make our air more breathable in the long run but it fails to tackle some of the biggest issues facing cities and towns in the UK, and more people on bikes are a huge part of the answer.

At the heart of the plan is a move to ban all new diesel and petrol vans and cars from 2040, alongside a range of measures to support the electric car market and retrofit existing vehicles. It remains to be seen if the plan will be an effective measure to improve air quality, but it is almost guaranteed that this will be another missed opportunity to think about how we move about and live in cities and towns.

Continue reading...

The river was once biologically dead but seals are back and a population survey will help guard against threats from disease and dredging

“It’s a good news story,” says zoologist Anna-Christina Cucknell, as she watches seals glide smoothly through the water, their dark eyes watchful as their heads swivel like periscopes. “In the 1950s, the Thames was declared biologically dead. But the seals are coming back.”

Cucknell will lead a land, air and sea survey of the seals in the greater Thames estuary which begins on Monday, including the harbour seals she is watching in the mouth of the river Stour, a short boat trip from Ramsgate marina.

Continue reading...

The Arctic is melting, the Antarctic slowly cracking up. Even 1.5℃ of warming will mean serious problems for Australia, and that target has probably already been blown. I think it’s really important, therefore that we talk about… meetings.

Yeah, I know. As the humorist Dave Barry has quipped, “meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organisations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate,” while Oscar Wilde had little doubt that they were a waste of time. But bear with me on this.

Pretty much any article on climate change ends with an exhortation that governments and corporations must behave differently, and that social movements must force them to do so. But as the former coal executive turned climate author Ian Dunlop recently asked: “What is to be done if our leaders are incapable of rising to the task?”

Social movements have traditionally been a laboratory, a pathfinder for new ways of doing things. Recycling, for instance, sprang from citizens’ efforts. But how can social movements exert pressure and set an example to be followed, if they do not grow in size and skill? And how are they to grow in size and skill if they do not retain more of the people who come to meetings, rallies and marches?

To me, that is the key question that often goes unanswered in the regular parade of “what is to be done” articles. The growth of social movements in response to crisis is taken as a given, or a trifling matter. But surely if the past ten years of climate politics have shown us anything it is that there is no linear relationship between scientists’ alarm and the number of people who are willing and able get involved in creating political pressure.

Which brings us to meetings.

Organisers of events may not realise it, but it’s quite a big deal for someone to make time to go to a meeting, especially one in the evening. We have children to look after (well, not me), as well as jobs, commitments, interests, hobbies. Besides, walking into a room full of strangers can sometimes be intimidating.

And yet so many of the meetings I have been to in Australia and the UK are intensely alienating to a newcomer. You turn up and are often ignored while people who know each other cluster in groups. You are usually invited to sit in rows (although circles are not automatically better). The speaker speaks (often overrunning) and then the question-and-answer session is dominated by confident and/or doctrinaire people who typically give speeches rather than ask questions, so as to show off how informed they already are.

The energy gradually leaks out of the room, and at the end the new faces drift out, most likely never to be seen again. They have become what I call “ego-fodder” for the organisers and dominant types. Rather than being true participants, they are extras in the background. These are meetings where you don’t meet anyone.

From cannon-fodder to ego-fodder.

This is the standard “information deficit model” style of meeting. It is a tragic waste of potential, and the question organisers have to ask themselves is – if our current methods of movement-building are fit for purpose, where is the resulting movement? We seem capable of mobilising people for two or three years, and then becoming demobilised either by success or, more recently, by failure.

What is to be done?

It doesn’t have to be this way. But to change, we need to invent some new rituals, new “institutions” (which is what academics call the rules – formal and informal – by which society reproduces itself).

For one thing, organisers could think about how they will welcome new people (without being too culty). Are name badges good or bad? Could you have your most personable old hand standing under a sign saying “Unsure what’s going on? New? Talk to me if you like.”

Perhaps the chair could invite people to turn to the person next to them, say hello, and spend two minutes finding out why they came to the meeting. Could you find funny ways of keeping the speaker to time (like the “clap clinic” – see below).

The clap clinic: if the evening’s guest speaker reaches the end of their time slot but won’t stop, just start loudly applauding anyway. Hudson and Roberts, Author provided Questioning the Q&A

“Wonderful presentation from our guest speaker. Now, any questions?” says the chair of the meeting, usually about 15 minutes later than they should have. Up shoot some hands. Those who’ve been to more than one or two meetings know what to expect next: prepared “questions” that are thinly-or-not-at-all-disguised speeches and hectoring points. These “questions” are asked by the usual suspects, who are typically male.

As the clock runs out (and people drift out), a few female hands tentatively go up. Their owners have realised that their question – the one they’d told themselves wasn’t up to scratch – is actually better than what’s gone before. But alas, it’s too late; only one or two get asked, and dealt with too quickly. The meeting finishes, and with it the opportunity for something different.

Instead we could have the chair say something like this:

Right. Let’s all turn to someone nearby you – ideally someone you don’t know. Introduce yourself and exchange impressions of the speech. If you have a question you are wondering whether to ask, find out if the other person thinks it’s a good ‘un. With their help, refine it, hone it and – please – for everyone’s sake, make it shorter. Women especially, your questions are just as good and welcome as men’s. You have two minutes…_

Measuring success is crucial. The current metric seems to be how many people came, how happy was the invited guest speaker about how long they got to talk for, rather than how many connections were facilitated, how many people were inspired to lend a shoulder to the grindstone. In my opinion we need to be able to treat this as a marathon, not a sprint.

That means keeping people engaged, not for a week or a month or a march, but in the long term. That means groups of people that grow, learn, organise and win, are aware of the skills and knowledge and relationships of individual members, and have habits in place to help each of those people to learn skills, share knowledge, and grow relationships.

In the next column I’ll explore how we might get to know each other’s strengths, weaknesses and hopes for the future, and do what academics call “asset mapping” without destroying everyone’s will to live.

For now, readers: What are your positive and negative experiences of attending meetings? What has “worked” to involve you in the activities of a group? What has kept you involved? What un-recruited you?

Venetians regularly protest against the huge cruise ships docking in the city, but mass tourism is not the only problem they bring – the toxic air they pump out is harmful to locals and visitors alike

If you’re heading to Venice on holiday this summer, don’t forget to pack your pollution mask. Worrying about toxic air might seem strange in a city with few roads and cars, but Venice’s air carries hidden risks.

Every day five or six of the world’s largest cruise ships chug into the heart of the ancient city, which hosts the Mediterranean’s largest cruise terminal. These ships advertise luxurious restaurants, vast swimming pools and exotic entertainment – but keep quiet about the hidden fumes they pump into the city’s air.

Continue reading...

Giant kelp can grow up to 60cm a day, given the right conditions. Joe Belanger/shutterstock.com

This is an edited extract from Sunlight and Seaweed: An Argument for How to Feed, Power and Clean Up the World by Tim Flannery, published by Text Publishing.

Bren Smith, an ex-industrial trawler man, operates a farm in Long Island Sound, near New Haven, Connecticut. Fish are not the focus of his new enterprise, but rather kelp and high-value shellfish. The seaweed and mussels grow on floating ropes, from which hang baskets filled with scallops and oysters. The technology allows for the production of about 40 tonnes of kelp and a million bivalves per hectare per year.

The kelp draw in so much carbon dioxide that they help de-acidify the water, providing an ideal environment for shell growth. The CO₂ is taken out of the water in much the same way that a land plant takes CO₂ out of the air. But because CO₂ has an acidifying effect on seawater, as the kelp absorb the CO₂ the water becomes less acid. And the kelp itself has some value as a feedstock in agriculture and various industrial purposes.

After starting his farm in 2011, Smith lost 90% of his crop twice – when the region was hit by hurricanes Irene and Sandy – but he persisted, and now runs a profitable business.

His team at 3D Ocean Farming believe so strongly in the environmental and economic benefits of their model that, in order to help others establish similar operations, they have established a not-for-profit called Green Wave. Green Wave’s vision is to create clusters of kelp-and-shellfish farms utilising the entire water column, which are strategically located near seafood transporting or consumption hubs.

Read more: Seaweed could hold the key to cutting methane emissions from cow burps

The general concepts embodied by 3D Ocean Farming have long been practised in China, where over 500 square kilometres of seaweed farms exist in the Yellow Sea. The seaweed farms buffer the ocean’s growing acidity and provide ideal conditions for the cultivation of a variety of shellfish. Despite the huge expansion in aquaculture, and the experiences gained in the United States and China of integrating kelp into sustainable marine farms, this farming methodology is still at an early stage of development.

Yet it seems inevitable that a new generation of ocean farming will build on the experiences gained in these enterprises to develop a method of aquaculture with the potential not only to feed humanity, but to play a large role in solving one of our most dire issues – climate change.

Globally, around 12 million tonnes of seaweed is grown and harvested annually, about three-quarters of which comes from China. The current market value of the global crop is between US$5 billion and US$5.6 billion, of which US$5 billion comes from sale for human consumption. Production, however, is expanding very rapidly.

Seaweeds can grow very fast – at rates more than 30 times those of land-based plants. Because they de-acidify seawater, making it easier for anything with a shell to grow, they are also the key to shellfish production. And by drawing CO₂ out of the ocean waters (thereby allowing the oceans to absorb more CO₂ from the atmosphere) they help fight climate change.

The stupendous potential of seaweed farming as a tool to combat climate change was outlined in 2012 by the University of the South Pacific’s Dr Antoine De Ramon N’Yeurt and his team. Their analysis reveals that if 9% of the ocean were to be covered in seaweed farms, the farmed seaweed could produce 12 gigatonnes per year of biodigested methane which could be burned as a substitute for natural gas. The seaweed growth involved would capture 19 gigatonnes of CO₂. A further 34 gigatonnes per year of CO₂ could be taken from the atmosphere if the methane is burned to generate electricity and the CO₂ generated captured and stored. This, they say:

…could produce sufficient biomethane to replace all of today’s needs in fossil-fuel energy, while removing 53 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year from the atmosphere… This amount of biomass could also increase sustainable fish production to potentially provide 200 kilograms per year, per person, for 10 billion people. Additional benefits are reduction in ocean acidification and increased ocean primary productivity and biodiversity.

Nine per cent of the world’s oceans is not a small area. It is equivalent to about four and a half times the area of Australia. But even at smaller scales, kelp farming has the potential to substantially lower atmospheric CO₂, and this realisation has had an energising impact on the research and commercial development of sustainable aquaculture. But kelp farming is not solely about reducing CO₂. In fact, it is being driven, from a commercial perspective, by sustainable production of high-quality protein.

A haven for fish. Daniel Poloha/shutterstock.com

What might a kelp farming facility of the future look like? Dr Brian von Hertzen of the Climate Foundation has outlined one vision: a frame structure, most likely composed of a carbon polymer, up to a square kilometre in extent and sunk far enough below the surface (about 25 metres) to avoid being a shipping hazard. Planted with kelp, the frame would be interspersed with containers for shellfish and other kinds of fish as well. There would be no netting, but a kind of free-range aquaculture based on providing habitat to keep fish on location. Robotic removal of encrusting organisms would probably also be part of the facility. The marine permaculture would be designed to clip the bottom of the waves during heavy seas. Below it, a pipe reaching down to 200–500 metres would bring cool, nutrient-rich water to the frame, where it would be reticulated over the growing kelp.

Von Herzen’s objective is to create what he calls “permaculture arrays” – marine permaculture at a scale that will have an impact on the climate by growing kelp and bringing cooler ocean water to the surface. His vision also entails providing habitat for fish, generating food, feedstocks for animals, fertiliser and biofuels. He also hopes to help exploited fish populations rebound and to create jobs. “Given the transformative effect that marine permaculture can have on the ocean, there is much reason for hope that permaculture arrays can play a major part in globally balancing carbon,” he says.

The addition of a floating platform supporting solar panels, facilities such as accommodation (if the farms are not fully automated), refrigeration and processing equipment tethered to the floating framework would enhance the efficiency and viability of the permaculture arrays, as well as a dock for ships carrying produce to market.

Given its phenomenal growth rate, the kelp could be cut on a 90-day rotation basis. It’s possible that the only processing required would be the cutting of the kelp from the buoyancy devices and the disposal of the fronds overboard to sink. Once in the ocean depths, the carbon the kelp contains is essentially out of circulation and cannot return to the atmosphere.

The deep waters of the central Pacific are exceptionally still. A friend who explores mid-ocean ridges in a submersible once told me about filleting a fish for dinner, then discovering the filleted remains the next morning, four kilometres down and directly below his ship. So it’s likely that the seaweed fronds would sink, at least initially, though gases from decomposition may later cause some to rise if they are not consumed quickly. Alternatively, the seaweed could be converted to biochar to produce energy and the char pelletised and discarded overboard. Char, having a mineralised carbon structure, is likely to last well on the seafloor. Likewise, shells and any encrusting organisms could be sunk as a carbon store.

Once at the bottom of the sea three or more kilometres below, it’s likely that raw kelp, and possibly even to some extent biochar, would be utilised as a food source by bottom-dwelling bacteria and larger organisms such as sea cucumbers. Provided that the decomposing material did not float, this would not matter, because once sunk below about one kilometre from the surface, the carbon in these materials would effectively be removed from the atmosphere for at least 1,000 years. If present in large volumes, however, decomposing matter may reduce oxygen levels in the surrounding seawater.

Large volumes of kelp already reach the ocean floor. Storms in the North Atlantic may deliver enormous volumes of kelp – by some estimates as much as 7 gigatonnes at a time – to the 1.8km-deep ocean floor off the Bahamian Shelf.

Submarine canyons may also convey large volumes at a more regular rate to the deep ocean floor. The Carmel Canyon, off California, for example, exports large volumes of giant kelp to the ocean depths, and 660 major submarine canyons have been documented worldwide, suggesting that canyons play a significant role in marine carbon transport.

These natural instances of large-scale sequestration of kelp in the deep ocean offer splendid opportunities to investigate the fate of kelp, and the carbon it contains, in the ocean. They should prepare us well in anticipating any negative or indeed positive impacts on the ocean deep of offshore kelp farming.

Only entrepreneurs with vision and deep pockets could make such mid-ocean kelp farming a reality. But of course where there are great rewards, there are also considerable risks. One obstacle potential entrepreneurs need not fear, however, is bureaucratic red tape, for much of the mid-oceans remain a global commons. If a global carbon price is ever introduced, the exercise of disposing of the carbon captured by the kelp would transform that part of the business from a small cost to a profit generator. Even without a carbon price, the opportunity to supply huge volumes of high-quality seafood at the same time as making a substantial impact on the climate crisis are considerable incentives for investment in seaweed farming.

Tim Flannery does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Epping Forest, Essex The deep carpet of moss hides a watery void, and the sparkling sundews are busy trapping insects

The Lodge Road bog is a pool of tranquillity at the centre of the commuter-traffic hum. Both my mobile phone and walkie-talkie radio signals have died, and only a few darting dragonflies break the stillness. Sponging up the sunlight, the bog glistens, a curve of brilliant green amid the deep summer gloom cast by surrounding beeches.

On the outer orbit of London, the survival of this fragile place, the most important habitat of its kind in Essex, seems astounding. Carbon-dating reveals that the first layer of vegetation was laid down here more than 4,000 years ago. Ponded back by a Neolithic trackway, or just some natural lip of gravel, the area was deepened by road building for the various incarnations of nearby Copped Hall since the middle ages.

Continue reading...

Report says fundamental failure to deliver national, coordinated, stable energy and climate policy a major factor in pushing up electricity prices.