[GWSG] Algae antiacid; we're not a sink; Houston's buyouts; Amazonian savanna; C capture; Jax SLR recs

[Tilley, Al]

1. The growing acidity of the oceans will eventually lead to an inability of phytoplankton to form their shells, disrupting the food chain and the ocean’s carbon cycle. (We will also have removed the planet’s primary source of oxygen.) We still have the opportunity to control the decline by ceasing to emit carbon.  https://phys.org/news/2019-08-acid-oceans-plankton-fueling-faster.html

2. Forestation of former agricultural land in the US was at first thought to make us a net carbon sink, but the amount of carbon sequestered may be lower than at first thought. "If we can identify accurate carbon flux numbers, we'll know where there's the most potential for carbon mitigation."  https://phys.org/news/2019-08-carbon-overestimated.html

3. Houston’s buyout program is a cautionary tale for those in areas threatened with recurrent flooding—and that includes most coastal communities. A coherent relocation program is obviously indicated. https://grist.org/article/buyouts-can-save-houston-hurricane-harvey-flood-soaked-homeowners/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=daily

4. The Amazon is close to a tipping point which would transform it from a rainforest to a savanna. The cause is clearance of the land for agriculture, mostly meat production. https://phys.org/news/2019-08-role-amazon-global-climate.html

5. Carbon capture has been used largely to squeeze the last oil out of a field. One or more of the carbon capture technologies popular with fossil fuel interests may someday prove sufficiently cheap, scalable, and energy efficient to be of use in drawing down significant amounts of C from the air and storing it in some as yet unidentified secure storage medium, such as a stable rock. Meanwhile, the article profiles current efforts in a field often propagandized. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/04/19/climate-change-solution-slowly-gains-ground/

Biochar and kelp permaculture are two scalable, cheap, and effective ways to sequester significant amounts of carbon more or less permanently. Neither will make much money for anyone, but they are worth supporting.

6. Of regional interest: the Jacksonville sea level rise task force has completed its work with a set of recommendations to the city leaders. The three leading recommendations are to hire a permanent resilience officer, to expand the boundaries of the adaptation action area (a formal designation required for state support), and to secure funding for a vulnerability assessment, the first step toward a climate action plan. Such an assessment analyzes future conditions such as sea level rise to allow us to determine what risks we are running.  https://news.wjct.org/post/sea-level-rise-task-force-wraps-will-urge-jacksonville-curb-emissions

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.unf.edu/pipermail/gwsg/attachments/20190829/e21aee34/attachment.html>