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| 00:01 | ladies and gentlemen distinguished guests here in person and those online I believe we have more than thousand people that have subscribed to this program my name is ramakrishna and I'm with the who is marine policy Center and I'm honored to stand before you to moderate this Mars colloquium a generous gift by Elizabeth W and Henry a moss to the good solutional traffic Institution they foresaw the Mars colloquia to heighten awareness and promote understanding among our community that addresses the serious Global |
| 00:48 | problems that confront Humanity what you will see this evening is a testament to Mars vision and who is commitment to understanding protecting and harnessing the remarkable capabilities of our oceans but first I would like to extend a heartfelt gratitude to James Cameron for sharing his insights on the value of our ocean to make climate ocean to climate through a short video James Cameron is a Visionary filmmaker and Ocean Explorer who has brought the mysteries of the deep ocean to the Forefront of public awareness |
| 01:35 | by daring to Journey to the deepest parts of our planet Cameron has inspired countless individuals to join the Quest for ocean exploration and conservation hi I'm Jim Cameron welcome everyone to the 2023 Morse colloquium science is in a race to understand the ocean Twilight Zone and to Spotlight its Great Value before it becomes yet another ecosystem ravaged by human activity and as you know the rise and fall from the depth to the surface and Back Again each day of trillions of animals is the foundation of our ocean food webs and as |
| 02:16 | part of the ocean's vast biological carbon pump and we love these weird and wonderful creatures they're climate Heroes they're sequestering at least as much carbon each year as emitted by all the world's automobiles tonight's event is part of a two-week long International Symposium on the mesopelagic we have gathered here a remarkable possibly unprecedented concentration of expertise on the ocean Twilight Zone and I so wish I could be there with you but the demands of Avatar 3 are keeping me here in New Zealand |
| 02:52 | so do great work and enjoy yes [Applause] the ocean Twilight Zone formerly known as The mesopelagic Zone lies just before the sunlit surface waters and extends down to depths of around thousand meters it is a world of Perpetual Twilight where sunlight barely penetrates yet life thrives in remarkable abundance and this Zone remains one of the least explored and least understood areas of our planet and yet it plays a crucial role in the health of our oceans and the stability of our climate one of the key reasons the ocean twilight zone is of such |
| 03:43 | Paramount importance is as you will hear from our esteemed speakers its role in the ocean's biological pump this natural mechanism is a vital part of the Earth's carbon cycle and holds significant implications for mitigating the climate crisis the lateral question is how does it do this the answer lies in the undeniable link between the health of our oceans and the stability of our planet's climate as we confront the looming threat of climate change we must recognize that the ocean's biological pump is a natural |
| 04:21 | Ally in our fight against Rising carbon dioxide levels by delving into the ocean Twilight Zone and gaining a deeper understanding of the biological processes at play we can unlock new strategies for enhancing carbon sequestration this knowledge first guide sustainable Fisheries manage fisheries management and even Inspire Innovative Technologies to replicate and augment the ocean's carbon Capital capabilities in fact the oceans biological pump is estimated to sequester a substantial portion of world's carbon emissions |
| 05:05 | several billion tons of carbon per year making it a critical component of a planet's carbon budget therein lies the challenge our understanding of this complex system is still Limited and the ocean Twilight Zone remains largely a mystery what we hope you will take away from this event is our Collective commitment to change that what you will see and hear over the course of this evening is the significance of these Concepts and why a gathering today is so momentous before I introduce our panelists we have one more video to show |
| 05:43 | from Ambassador Peter Thompson Peter Thompson is a tireless advocate for ocean health and sustainability as a former president of the United Nations General Assembly and now serving as the United Nations special Envoy on Ocean Thompson has been instrumental in driving International efforts to protect our oceans and raise awareness about their crucial role in understanding the climate crisis foreign greetings from the sunny islands of Fiji I would have liked to have been with you today in Woods Hall but the time and |
| 06:23 | tired have not conspired in my favor from past visits to Woods Hole have a special place in my memory and I've long valued the Woods Hole Community as a steadfast supporter in our Global efforts to reverse the decline of the ocean's Health it goes without saying that the Woods Hole oceanographic institution has been a trusted source of scientific knowledge on the ocean's properties for longer than most of us can remember I recall as a boy here in Fiji reading National Geographic Magazines and becoming aware of the |
| 06:56 | amazing Marine Adventures emanating from Hui it was us quite a thrill of a half a century later to visit Woods Hole in My capacity is fiji's ambassador to the United Nations I'd like to take this moment to recognize that in our communal responsibility to address Global problems Elizabeth and Henry Morris were Visionaries they envisaged an interdisciplinary Linker between the present and the future and seeking an integrated overview of research and Discovery expanding dialogue in the cause of better Global perspectives |
| 07:31 | by establishing a Perpetual Morse colloquium fund they have enabled Hui to interface effectively with the public promoting translation of complex scientific findings into more approachable language for you and I to to digest as someone who works intensively in their own motion policy I can attest to the fact that policy makers and scientists need to be more effectively engaged it is thus highly encouraging for me that the ocean Twilight Zone project now on its fifth year of work has embraced policy influence and public |
| 08:06 | engagement as a critical component on power with its scientific and technological goals may I also say that I am encouraged that Dr ramakrishna are esteem moderator tonight is proving to be so instrumental in bringing together Partners from around the world to better understand the positive role that the ocean can play in climate Solutions you may be wondering how relevant all this is to you well one example might be the resilient Woods Hole initiative which is guiding adaptation measures for the town and its institutions with a |
| 08:41 | view to surviving the onslaught of sea level rise I recall from my last visit to Woods Hole that this is a pressing local issue which will only become more urgent over time I hope you will take home from tonight's colloquium a heightened awareness of the ocean's outside his role in our climate for example I think you'll be fascinated to learn more about the ocean's biological carbon pump which moves a massive amount of carbon up and down the vast ocean depths and water columns most of all I hope your take home will |
| 09:13 | be that there Still Remains so much in the ocean for Humanity to discover understand and respect and that we have in Hui a champion interlakuta of ocean Discovery and Analysis so on with your program it was a pleasure addressing you all at this Morse colloquium and Fair Winds and farewell from Fiji [Applause] now it is my great pleasure to invite and introduce and invite our first Speaker Christina hilde Christina is the Celia heisis advisor for the international Union for the conservation of nature and an Adjunct |
| 09:58 | professor at the Middlebury Institute for international studies in Monterey California where she teaches an intensive course on International Marine law for almost 30 Years Christina has worked on the Progressive development of public international law relating to the marine environment with a growing focus on the high seas and international seabed area are many interests include ocean governance shipping fishing deep sea bed mining as well as tools and Technologies for advancing Marine biodiversity conservation and sustainable use |
| 10:38 | she was just named the honorary Professor by the University of Edinburgh in recognition of her work with the school of geosciences and the law school and in her spare time Christina advances science-based progress she co-founded and currently serves on the boards of four initiatives deep oceans stewardship initiative Global ocean biodiversity initiative she does all that and is a member of the executive Planning Group of the U. |
| 11:12 | N decade of ocean science Christiana you have the floor well thank you I've been doing this a long time is how all of this gets done that so persistence does pay off that's I'm excited to be here to join you tonight to talk about another unsung hero of the ocean's biological carbon pump which is about a new agreement that's been signed it's been adopted as will be open for Signature at the United Nations this coming Wednesday at um during their high level week that is called the United Nations treaty for the |
| 11:50 | conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity Beyond limits of national jurisdiction you'll know why we call it the BB J agreement or the high seas biodiversity agreement for short that I'm going to try to give you a little bit of an Insider's perspective as having been part of these negotiations over the past 20 years uh to look at the implications of the ocean Twilight Zone and the biological carbon pump for Global ocean law and policy and why I think this Pisces agreement is the unsung hero here is we're all aware that |
| 12:27 | climate change is having drastic impacts on the biology the chemistry and the physics of our shared ocean and what the world ocean assessment of by the United Nations showed out showed in 2015 is the need to take an integrated approach to addressing the multitude of impacts currently affecting the health and resilience of our shared Ocean and the Pisces agreement which is dealing in the area's 200 nautical miles Beyond national jurisdiction this map is showing the limits of where the waters are deeper than 200 nautical 200 meters |
| 13:03 | deep but in anyways these boundaries overlap but in many ways they don't but it's showing us we need to take a global ocean approach and the high seas biodiversity agreement at least provides us that platform to deal with two-thirds of the ocean as well as to lift the capacity of the many developing States who similarly have lots of deep water in their National boundaries to deal with some of the challenges that we're now confronting in climate change that was what the heises biodiversity agreement does is to set forth this |
| 13:36 | platform for Global cooperation focused on promoting and enhancing conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity but also through reflecting the needs for ecosystem resilience and maintaining and preserving and restoring ecosystem integrity and for the first time their specific mention about maintaining the oceans carbon cycling services that was and the need to ensure that the ocean is able to respond and adapt and evolve to the many impacts of climate change including the cumulative aspects as we're going |
| 14:15 | forward that's the treaty as I said is opening for Signature this coming week it's hoped that 60 States will rapidly put the agreement through their National processes to enable them to formally ratify the agreement to bring it into Force we need 60 Nations to step forward to sign the dotted line and to implement National legislation we're hoping that will be done by 2025 that's two short years um but already I think I have heard somewhere between 50 and 100 States may be stepping up to the plate at the |
| 14:49 | United Nations on Wednesday to sign their names heads of states and heads of governments thus the treaty has multiple components but as I said it's objective it's an approach is really how to protect and sustainably manage Marine biodiversity while also building and sustaining ecological resilience I'll give you examples of how this applies to the biological carbon pump after I take you for one of my favorite images that actually shows the complexity and the interaction of the ocean's biological carbon pump as |
| 15:21 | mediated by many of the creatures that live there for a large part of these creatures including the lantern fish in the middle spend half their time half of their days are nice if you will up in the surface waters and then swim down the greatest migration of any creature on this planet and they're bringing their food supply and their poops along with them if I haven't stole Debbie's Thunder but as you can see the lantern fish and the other creatures don't live alone they're connected to the surface |
| 15:49 | they're actually a food source for Albatross they're a food source for many beaked whales as well as tuna swordfish sea turtles you name it are dependent or Reliant at least in some small part on the services of this ocean ecosystem and ocean climate pump so why do I think the BB and J the high seas agreement is the climate hero well for the first time you have a global Arena bringing States together through a conference of parties that is able to evolve the treaty to adapt to changing conditions as I said it's focused on |
| 16:25 | building and enhancing ecosystem resilience ensuring we can manage our ecosystems in a sustainable way one of the key tools for enhancing and sustaining ecosystem resilience is of course Marine protected areas as we have heard conventional biological diversity is urging states to establish their um Marine protected areas covering 30 percent of the ocean by 2030. |
| 16:49 | we can't really do this full 30 percent if we don't include areas of the high seas and we can't maintain our oceans biological pump if we don't also protect and restore the ecosystem processes at the same time the treaty is set up to ensure that activities that do go forward in this vast area of the high seas are designed to not undermine ecosystem resilience and to maintain ecosystem Integrity including of course the carbon cycling services and this is going to be critically important in the days of um some are starting to look at |
| 17:23 | potential fisheries and these apologic resources looking at Deep Sea Bud Mining and its potential impacts on um uh in the plume through injecting contaminants and dust particles if you will into the Mesa middle of the mesopelagic as well as potential ideas for ocean climate ocean carbon dioxide removal that could have potential implications for the health and resilience of the ocean carbon cycle that was but no treaty stands alone it is also a fantastic tool to be able to influence and interact with these other |
| 18:01 | important International bodies uh starting with the Paris agreement is as we better understand how the ocean works and the importance of maintaining the ocean's biological carbon pump we can ideally ramp up ambition at the national levels as they're setting their nationally determined contributions as well as providing more platforms for governments to come together to say hey we need to find more ways to better respect and appreciate the role of the open ocean and deep sea in carbon sequestration the convention on |
| 18:30 | biological diversity brings all states together to actually focus on better ways to conserve and manage biodiversity with the vision of of course 100 sustainability as well as 30 protection by 2030. we don't have much time if we're going to get there but we need to be paying attention to what's going on in these other arena with respect to high seas fishing are they undermining or taking out or how Reliant are they on some of the prey that live in the ocean Twilight Zone ocean climate engineering |
| 19:02 | how might it interfere will it interfere and if so how much with the ocean's biological carbon pump while we're interested in trying to get rid of some of our problems created on land can we put it just down into the deep sea expecting nothing to happen worth concern so I'm very happy to say that you know after 20 years this U. |
| 19:23 | N Pisces treaty is now on the books open for Signature open for Nations to stand up sign and ratify and that the scientific Community has an excellent opportunity to already help Advance the scientific basis for many of the institutions the processes the Marine protected areas as well as providing the wisdom we need to truly and ensure informed decision making in the years to come thank you [Applause] you will see very soon in the following presentations how much of the signs that scientists will tell us contributed to |
| 20:03 | the kinds of agreements that Christina talked about our next speaker is a principal engineer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute to earned a PhD in bioengineering from California Institute of Technology and is the lead of the bio inspiration lab kakani and her group investigates ways that imagine Imaging can enable observations of life in the ocean by developing novel Imaging and illumination tools automating the classification of underwater visual data using artificial intelligence and integrating algorithms on vehicles with |
| 20:47 | robotic vehicle missions it is a trait I tell you you'll watch it very soon kakani and her team are able to consistently and persistently observe ocean life their efforts are increasing scientific access to biology and related phenomenon in the deep sea okay you have the floor [Applause] object thank you and thank you for uh the invitation I'm very excited to be back in with Paul um you know just in time for this hurricane it seems uh but anyways uh today I get the opportunity to talk to you about ocean observations and how do |
| 21:28 | we actually observe a place like the ocean Twilight Zone it's a plethora of life you come across in the ocean's midwaters is pretty significant as you see from this array of images that I've downloaded from the ambari database there's a breadth of diversity of different types of animals that live there uh all evolving to survive in this region the oceans midwaters where animals maybe their entire life never contact the surface right they never reach the C4 they never reach the sea surface and so that means they've |
| 22:04 | adapted to that environment in really different ways so examples of these animals right you've got squids obviously jellyfish there's these long Colonial animals called siphonophores and then also my favorite Giant larvations because they create and secrete these massive mucus structures I fondly call them snot palaces uh that play an incredibly important role in filtering particulate and carbon from the the waters around these animals and then um sending carbon rapidly to the seafloor after these animals leaves |
| 22:42 | these structures behind to build new ones so we know based on a lot of work that's been done at least in the Monterey Bay Area is that these giant larvasions this process of filtering lots of food in particulate and abandoning these structures distinct rapidly about 800 meters per day play an important role about sinking a third of the particulate in the Monterey Bay Area alone so this is something that an individual group of animals or an individual species of animals can do what is possible Right what are the other |
| 23:16 | contributions that biology might be having to this cycling of carbon and this is why we need to increase our capacity to preserve life there to understand how many animals what what is their role as well and so we've been developing a number of different Technologies and I wanted to show you at least a video of the mesobot um I know that this is a multi-institutional initiative that involves obviously Woods Hole but also ambari Stanford and University of Texas in Rio Grande Valley this particular vehicle is is designed to operate in the |
| 23:53 | ocean's midwaters and our group The my inspiration Lab at ambari spent a lot of time trying to integrate visual data into the navigation capabilities of this this vehicle and so what that means is just using this visual information this vehicle can track an individual animal for a long period of time the goal is to reach 24 hours so we can get you know a day in the life of an animal in the ocean's midwaters we have obviously a lot more work to go but this is you know one of many tools that we are bringing |
| 24:27 | to Bear right to understand life in the ocean uh we're also there's a actually a minion outside that's an autonomous float uh that's a project that's actually being led by Melissa omond at URI and there what the goal is is to try and be able to understand how carbon through particle movement or particle transport is being cycled and what one of the things our group is doing and I know Ken is also involved in that project is integrating stereo cameras so that we can understand not only the |
| 24:59 | particle sizes like and and maybe quantify the type of carbon or amount of carbon that's being as sequestered but also understand how fast this carbon is Sinking by measuring sinking rates directly but again in order for us to be able to fill our observational gaps we have to think more broadly and aggressively around Automation and Robotics and so what we're doing now is incorporating artificial intelligence in the in our vehicles but also in the analysis analysis of data and one of the ways that we're doing that what we're |
| 25:34 | recognizing is that we really need to massively scale base the the amount of collaboration and cooperation we have to try and fill these knowledge gaps and so one of the ways we're doing that is not only creating mechanisms for experts to collaborate but also for ocean enthusiasts to give us or to help us right with this ocean Discovery process and so one of the ways we're doing that is we're building big databases like fathomnet you can check it out on a website what it is is a database repository for labeled data so data what |
| 26:09 | we know that things are in specific animals that they are in visual data and the idea here is through fathomnet you can help you can create models you can aggregate taxonomic expertise and you can then share them broadly with the community in addition to fathomnet we're also developing a phone-based video game called fathom versus and so we're dividing ocean lovers animal lovers armchair explorers to participate and help us improve the artificial intelligence that we use to discover Life in the ocean and you know be part |
| 26:43 | of this entire process and so far using fathomnet and the data that we're getting through these data pipelines has really already created an impact so this is one of um the videos that we've collected using our remotely operated vehicles in ambari we've deployed one of the algorithms trained on fathomed and that's what's creating these bounding boxes as well as uh displaying IDs of animals and even in some cases down to the species level and so what we know already is that the incorporation of these kinds of you know |
| 27:17 | algorithms while they're not perfect has at least increased the rate of our analysis of this kind of data by an order of magnitude and as we start building systems that enable that are very focused on improving collaborations between humans and artificial intelligence we expect this rate to only increase and so in addition to just you know applying this data on uh visual data that we might collect one of the things that we're also able to do is integrate these algorithms onto our vehicles themselves pre-programmed to look for |
| 27:52 | animals or features that we want to study oops and what this is is a a demonstration of us looking for a giant levation snot Palace and then on the top left you'll notice that we transition from a search base to an acquire phase and then now to a track phase and so this I know I sound very excited uh but I really am uh and so what this means is now we have the capability to observe these animals and also the ability to scale up our observations of this particular place and animals that live there and so the hope is that over time |
| 28:31 | as we incorporate automation as we incorporate new robotic um you know vessels or vehicles that allow us to see the space we can fully understand the life that lives there in the Oceanside Waters thank you very much [Applause] no amazing technology there thank you kakani and our next speaker is Professor Deborah Steinberg Debbie is a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science a research interests include the role of zooplankton cycling of carbon and nutrients and the food web of the ocean Twilight Zone |
| 29:13 | he was she has worked in several Marine environments including Coastal California the Antarctic the saragaso sea the North Pacific the Amazon River plume and the Chesapeake Bay Debbie earned her PhD at the University of California Santa Cruz and before joining the Virginia Institute in 2001 she was a research fellow at UC Santa Cruz and a research scientist at the Bermuda Institute of ocean Sciences she serves in numerous leadership positions in the broader oceanographic community of special note she was awarded the state Council of |
| 29:50 | Higher Education for Virginia's outstanding faculty award the highest honor of the Commonwealth of Virginia that the communal of Virginia bestows upon faculty at Virginia colleges and universities Debbie you have the floor thank you yeah [Applause] all right good evening everyone great to be here and um I'm going to dig into this biological carbon pump a little bit here and tell you why it's a climate hero so what you're seeing here is uh a Time series of human activities releasing carbon through burning of fossil fuel |
| 30:41 | and also land use changes which is mostly deforestation and these so those are sources of carbon anthropogenic sources of carbon and the sinks for this carbon are the ocean the land and then some of this carbon is accumulating in the atmosphere and that's what's leading to global warming and what um I want to tell you is that the oceans absorb about 25 of this anthropogenic or human CO2 that's going into the atmosphere and so the oceans are very very important in the carbon cycle on our planet now this is a diagram sort of a simplistic |
| 31:31 | diagram of the ocean's biological carbon pump and this is the suite of biological processes that move carbon out of the atmosphere and into the deep ocean and so vital planning is or go through these processes with you so phytoplankton or the microscopic plants in the surface ocean through photosynthesis take up this carbon dioxide and in turn they're eaten by small drifting animals called zooplankton which are in turn eaten by fish and in this way carbon from the atmosphere makes it into the surface |
| 32:11 | bars the ocean and into the ocean food web now what happens next is there there are three main ways that that carbon makes it into the deep oceans exported into the deep sea and those processes include just sinking of dead stuff dead phytoplankton also the fecal pellets or poop of of animals and those kind of aggregate together and sink out of the surface waters into the deep ocean so that's one of the important Pathways of the biological carbon pump another one is this diol vertical migration it's movement of mesoplagic |
| 32:52 | animals from the deep Waters in where they reside during the day into the surface waters at night where they feed under the cover of Darkness and so that's to avoid getting eaten basically and they they Munch in the service Waters and then they swim back down to death and those that daily movement of animals as you heard the largest migration on Earth is moving carbon into the deep ocean another process is just physical mixing of this organic carbon um into into the deep ocean just sort of injecting particles and dissolved |
| 33:30 | organic material into the deep sea so on the right here what you're seeing is a sort of a picture of what we call Marine snow these detrital particles that are sinking out of the ocean ocean it's maybe about half a millimeter uh in size I mean there's all kinds of stuff in there there's a fecal pellet and little even little animals there and what happens is as this material is sinking out of the surface waters it's getting gobbled up by the food web in the ocean's Twilight Zone because they |
| 34:05 | really rely on this rain of material from surface waters for their their nutrition so as this materials thinking there is less and less of it with depth and so what happens is a very small amount of the carbon that's sinking out from the surface waters makes it into the deep ocean and we call that being sequestered this this makes it into the deep sea where it's far away from the surface and we don't um have that carbon in contact with the atmosphere for a long time where it can contribute to global warming and so |
| 34:45 | there's a lot of processes happening in the ocean Twilight Zone that we're studying to figure out how fast this material is cycling and how much of it is being sequestered in the in the devotion so how deep that carbon gets is really important for our oceans climate and it's all those Critters and processes there in the ocean Twilight Zone that really play a very important role in getting that carbon to depth and so this um biological carbon pump exports on the order of 10 gigatons of carbon per year the billions of tons of |
| 35:26 | carbon per year this is twice the annual accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and four times the annual net flux of carbon dioxide into the ocean so consequently very small changes in say the photosynthesis rate or primary production of the microscopic plants and the surface waters or changes in export of carbon very small changes can significantly affect the magnitude of the biological carbon tox and thus the this sort of partitioning of carbon dioxide Between the Ocean and the atmosphere and so without the biological carbon |
| 36:11 | pump the atmosphere CO2 would be about 50 percent higher so the last thing I want to leave you with is that the the structure of the and the biodiversity of this bio of the organisms that live in the ocean um are going to really matter for carbon export and just like on land in different regions of the world's oceans there are different groups of plants and animals and I'm showing an example from one of our cruises in the subarctic Pacific where these big copepods these little Crustaceans the size of a grain |
| 36:50 | of rice are really abundant in the Antarctic and the Southern Ocean we have these large diatoms which are phytoplankton that can sing aggregate together and sink out and transport a lot of carbon large zooplankton like this Krill and and these logic snails or pteropods and Felts and then in a tropics and subtropics we have these very diverse communities that and the food web there starts out with these very small plants called um picoplankton and these are the size of bacteria so very small phytoplankton that don't think very uh quickly and |
| 37:31 | they're fed upon by a whole range of different organisms and of of different sizes and and the um what I want to show you is that for these copepods and krill and then you notice I've got South here and a nice highlighted yellow box and what I want to do I'm so excited to show you their fecal pellets here or poop and that are really important part of the biological carbon pump and so those cells these gelatinous cell planktons produce these very large hoops and they think really fast on the order |
| 38:07 | of a thousand meters or three thousand feet per day which is about five times faster than the fecal pellets from acryl here or 10 times faster than those from the scope the copepod fecal pellets and so if we've got salps around that's carbon sequestration and and so it really the the Food Web Matters and it's not something that most humans see right in in the ocean Twilight Zone and it's um you know such a fundamental part of our ocean ecosystem and fundamental for carbon sequestration and so um but it's |
| 38:48 | largely out of our sight so we're just trying to bring that to you today so you realize how um it is the climate here also thank you very much [Applause] thank you very much Debbie now last but not least Ken bissler 10 is a serious scientist and who is made in chemistry and geochemistry Department he joined Hui first as a Hui MIT join program PhD student over 35 years ago is a marine radio chemist who studies the fate and distribution of radioactive elements in the ocean hence lab has been active in response to |
| 39:37 | human-caused releases of radioactivity in the environment tracking and monitoring radioactivity released into the ocean by the Fukushima daichi nuclear power plant disaster and from earlier sources such as Chernobyl and atomic weapons testing at the Marshall Islands he was widely quoted in the recent days after the decision by the Japanese government to release the waters Ken also use this naturally occurring radioactive elements to study the ocean carbon cycle Ken serves as the principal investigator for carbon and climate on who is ocean |
| 40:16 | Twilight Zone project and he's a specialist in Marine carbon dioxide removal techniques with a focus on iron fertilization and he's also the founder of exploring ocean iron Solutions a group that brings together a number of scientists from around the world to fully understand the implications of it Ken you have the floor [Applause] thank you Alma and thank you all for coming and those online well it's a blustery night out there uh I'm gonna try and tell a kind of an optimistic story I think about how these climate |
| 40:56 | Heroes might help us reduce or very similar to pain and loss due to climate change and how that might we might be able to affect that so that's what I want to bring us to by the end and I need to show you this one graph uh because it's really has two processes that we know something about that are needed to stabilize climate and Deb's graph I think went up to at the present time this is going to the Future 2100 and it's a plot of our emissions of carbon dioxide here human emissions and a timeline here that has a |
| 41:32 | dunk grade section the reduction of greenhouse gases by reducing fossil fuel use That's essential no matter what we're talking about to stabilize climate we have to reduce our emissions right and we know how to do that with things like solar and wind and other Technologies increasing efficiencies that's by far the biggest part of our challenge moving ahead the blue part you may not have thought as much about but it's not equally important but definitely we've come to the conclusion that we need that as well |
| 42:05 | in order to stabilize this climate it's called negative emissions here we often call it carbon dioxide removal is taking out what's already in the atmosphere but we put a lot of carbon dioxide out there that's causing these problems so how do we do this how do we get up to a point around mid-century where we can balance emissions and beyond that there'll always be some greenhouse gas emissions most likely uh but how do we remove what's there to stabilize our climate that's really the challenge and I'll |
| 42:36 | talk a little bit about the scale of this billions of tons I think W's gigatons it's a it's a big scale it's a problem that's planetary and something we really have to take hold of if you want to make a dent in this type of curve and so thinking of those scales uh Debbie talked about how 25 goes in the ocean now 25 to land plants the rest ends up with the atmosphere this is a little different this is looking what how much is there in each of those different reservoirs how many billion tons of in the atmosphere that number is |
| 43:10 | 600 deep ocean you probably see already is the biggest circle there 37 000 gigatons billion tons of carbon is stored in the deep ocean 2500 all land plants and soils combined so when you're thinking of manipulating or understanding the carbon cycle or how where does it go and how could we influence how much gets into each of these things these reservoirs and so it's important to know here that that atmosph deep ocean Reservoir is the biggest 50 times larger than what's in the atmosphere and one thing that |
| 43:46 | astounded me when I first kind of looked at it is you know those 15 20 times more carbon in this deep ocean Reservoir than all of the land plants and all of the surface soils so we ignore the ocean at our parallel if we're thinking about what we can do about climate or even just predicting how it will change in the future that's a very important part of it that number actually 37 000 is so large we could take all of the human emissions since the Industrial Revolution and that would nudge that number by less than one |
| 44:15 | percent well that is a big number and that's what we're talking about trying to nudge perhaps as I move forward here in this part of the presentation but I also want to kind of bring home you know what is a billion tons I mean it's just hard to imagine how many elephants how are you going to do it but I found this one quite useful uh a billion tons of carbon think of a train calling call each of those call cars are about 15 meters 50 feet long and they carry about 100 tons of carbon in the form of coal |
| 44:47 | so if I want to have a train that can pull and move a billion tons of carbon that train would have to circle the equator four times four entire times so again that's the scale of what we have to deal with when we're talking Heroes here we're really talking superheroes they have to do a lot and we have to get several of these billion tons out per year if we want to follow that curve that I just showed you but so think of that a train circling the equator four times that gets you one of these gigatons one billion tons |
| 45:21 | so the question several of us were asked by the national academies to work on a consensus report of oh could the ocean remove even more can we get more into those reservoirs particularly the deep ocean and so we were tasked to look at six of them uh and I'm going to go through these pretty briefly uh focus in later on Ocean iron and kind of on the left we have this nature-based uh Solutions on the right more engineered and on the left of ones that are probably easiest to understand are going plants seaweed |
| 45:55 | or these phytoplanks and the debut togus about so plants through photosynthesis take out carbon dioxide they produce oxygen those plants in the ocean alone produce half of the oxygen on this planet so it's a lot of activity for these microscopic plants that need nutrients to grow so we looked at how we might enhance that I'll talk about that in particular but also seaweed farming as a way to expand what we do along the coast into the open ocean to get to those larger scales so we looked at those two nature-based solutions you'll |
| 46:28 | see they're a slightly bigger Circle in yellow than ecosystem recovery there's of course a lot of carbon stored in the plants and animals that live in the ocean this is an open ocean example but it's a little bit smaller because we all I think in our hearts want to protect those ecosystems and see them expanded but it's not enough story there are millions of tons not billions to turn that climate dial so the only reason one reason it's a little smaller in my interpretation of the value of |
| 46:56 | these is that it just isn't going to be big enough it's something we definitely could do today and should we do we should be doing with these acts to protect 30 by 30. let's go to another big circle here on the right ocean alkalinity I'm not going to do any chemical equations here you know in a chemistry Department it's basically taking ground up minerals rocks and trying to affect the chemistry of the ocean by Distributing that on beaches or in the ocean to allow more carbon dioxide as the atmosphere to more |
| 47:25 | readily dissolve into the ocean as a chemical process we can do it in the lab I could do it in a small Beaker how can we do that at scale as a question many scientists are asking right now but it could be scaled up it would take a lot of pressure billions of tons to affect billions and tons of removal but that certainly is what happens in nature with processes like weathering of rocks on longer time scales so all of these are about speeding up what's happening naturally uh briefly ocean tubes there's a small |
| 47:55 | one on the left that's bringing up water and the reason that's a bit smaller is we can use wave pumps other forms to get that water up without consuming a lot of energy but that and that brings up nutrients so that enhances the production and this biological pump but it also brings up carbon dioxide that got there on all of those sinking pellets and so it seems like it's got a double duty to do it has to move as much as it brings up in addition so that's the only reason that's a little smaller |
| 48:23 | and the electrochemistry on the right just takes a lot of energy to electrochemically either split out carbon dioxide and store it or change the alkaline the chemistry itself so you need many many factories and lots of fossil fuel free energy to go down that path but basically the academies we look at all of these and the example I'll give is ocean iron but they have a similar uncertainty similar questions and we should be looking at all of them so my last couple of slides let's look at Ocean iron and for those that have |
| 48:55 | heard about this you know plants need sunlight they need warm Waters usually uh in your garden you need nitrogen and phosphorus and fertilizers and iron is one of those essential nutrients not very much as needed and that's one advantage a little iron goes a very long way to make things grow in the ocean we showed 15 20 years ago people in the audience here well on some of those experiments leading that and if you add iron areas that are typically dust limited most of the iron in the ocean comes from dust from land so if you go |
| 49:29 | to those places that don't have a lot of dust we can enhance the green stuff we can make things grow and that was definitely shown but what we haven't done well and what I think our group is going to look at is okay what's the fate of that material and so how verbally is that stored how big can that be scaled what are the intentional Echo logical impacts and unintended we need we're trying to grow things that are naturally occurring but we're giving the advantage to some in this case diatoms what is the |
| 49:59 | cost my last slice about ethical standards but this group has been kind of satisfying for me to see the scientific Community we call ourselves exploring ocean iron Solutions because we want to be clear we do not have a solution but it's exploring that's important it's a science that has to come first really not comfortable with the idea that we should be selling carbon credits even on a voluntary Market until we really know all of the impacts what the effects might be so we're trying to do this more from a |
| 50:29 | ground up approach rather than commercial realization but there are other ways forward in this field but I feel comfortable doing this as scientists and one reason is the first thing we decided we had to do is like come up with some principles right how we do this can be as important as what we do and by that I mean the principles of code of conduct by which you might undergo research on these big Global problems that affect people using the ocean commas things that are outside of the territorial uh Waters that the |
| 51:01 | bbnj and others both so these I'll just go briefly through them but you know we certainly want to have as our first order events we're trying to do this for the benefit of humans in the environment that's our motivation we need real responsibility to oversee these types of studies uh we need to know what those guidelines are we need open and Cooperative research that's easy for a scientists to say that's what we do so this has to happen in that way we brought together right now I think it's |
| 51:30 | 30 institutions 17 countries 50 scientists so I think that idea fits very well with where we're coming from uh we need iterative and independent assessments it's not going to be one group so we have to build that in that's what Marcus would demand that's what governments would demand if this moves forward and we certainly need to be engaging the public right from the start in considering what these options are doing something like this versus essentially doing nothing watching what we're seeing now which is what we're |
| 51:59 | trying to we're very certainly slow down one thing maybe it didn't say well enough after that uh slide with the six different methods we said let's do it all it really gets down to you know there's no single Silver Bullet here we call it kind of silver Buckshot right you're going to need lots of solutions at the same time to make a dent on the scale of multiple billions of tons so I'll just end by saying you know we know the ocean takes up carbon dioxide the question is can how much and |
| 52:30 | can we influence how much it gets deep can we do that in a responsible way and so kind of in this climate Hero theme you know the biological carbon pump is one obvious way if you saw those six at least three involve the biological pump deputies flight of South pellets I would have ended on something like that because that's really it's the poop that matters it's the way how you get it quickly to the bottom and that's how you get it durably stored because most of what data does is recycles the carbon and we want |
| 52:59 | to look at that longer term influence our climate so with that we'll create the panel [Applause] if I could kindly ask other panelists to come over to the center and also have the lights on um Paul thank you um the the billion tons that Ken talked about you know the the carbon the good strain going around the um the Earth about four times another way of um thinking about that is the annual carbon emissions of a country like Germany or Japan total that is just one billion R is uh James Cameron talked about the total |
| 53:47 | emissions coming out of um navigation and Aviation uh exercise for one year so it's big stuff and that the oceans and through the biological pump can do that is really quite extraordinary we started about five minutes late so you know but our speakers are right on time with their representations So the plan now is that I asked them a few questions and then open it up for your comments as well as those coming online and then I ask all of us to be very disciplined in terms of really being chart with the questions but the first |
| 54:24 | question that I have is for anyone on the panel that want to speak about it is that we recognize the value of oceans and the role that they play in stabilizing the global climate but many of the commentators including the United Nations through the U.N framework conventional and climate change and various other things have not factored that in a person like Bill Gates who has spoken extensively about the problem and what needs to be done to solve it in his book on how to avoid climate disaster the solutions we have and the |
| 54:59 | breakthroughs we need didn't mention ocean even once if would any essay like to respond to that and say why this Omission was a missed opportunity and how the ocean plays a major role in Ocean's climate well I guess I'll I can start by saying it's um you know partly maybe we're not a scientist doing our job to communicate that um and also so we could can do better and I also think that it is one of these sort of out of sight out of mind things right it's people um you can see trees growing you know |
| 55:46 | you can see the sky but you can't see the mid water and it's and so that's those are two but I'll just say I mean the scientists have been doing an amazing job and bringing awareness of the ocean's importance to the climate change system that there have been Pavilions there have been events there's been amazing attention paid to the importance of the ocean in the climate change succession perhaps it hasn't percolated out to those who are not attending the meetings and perhaps we haven't had enough media |
| 56:20 | attention to the very important contributions that science happened making um hopefully that will change Christina if I could continue with that um what do you think needs to be done for the policy makers to take deportion um as a climate solution uh in the emerging policies I mean I know you've talked about the the high seas agreement the bbnj but looking more at the climate is it more science is it you know getting the signs to be in front of the policy makers what do you think should be done well I'm the title like who |
| 57:02 | wants all of the above that we definitely need more science we need to be able to understand the implications of what it is we're proposing but we also need to perhaps take the policy makers to see that or at least to give them a proxy experience about what it's like and what the relative value and importance of the ocean is to other types of carbon services and carbon Cycles I think um the information needs to be packaged in a palatable way perhaps the um the phone games that we can do to sort of understand the interactions of all these |
| 57:40 | various components need to be brought forward and made more accessible thank you kakani if I may ask you this next question um with the temperature increase and how the surface water is warming to record the levels Etc one of the Expressions that has come up very frequently is that ocean has a fever and is becoming sour and breathless can you explain this statement and why is this happening and how concerned should we be yes um you know I think it's a nice way to think it kind of put forth this this idea or at least you know the reality |
| 58:25 | that the ocean faces right the ocean is getting warmer it's also you know acidifying so it's becoming less basic more acidic uh and it's also having we're seeing a reduction in oxygen and what that is right those are the costs right that it takes right for the ocean to have borne this brunt of additional carbon dioxide that we've released as part of you know our activities and our actions uh by burning fossil fuels and with that those costs have very real implications right uh you know if you |
| 59:06 | have increasing temperatures we're already seeing Coral bleaching that's happening on these massive scales you also see that you know animals are changing their locations their ranges right they're moving around and moving to places that make them perhaps more vulnerable and that can have impacts right on food webs that we rely on uh you know with ocean acidification you've got a reduction right in carbonate ions being available to shelled organisms like shrimp crabs oysters you know things again we love to eat and so that's |
| 59:43 | having an impact uh and then last but not least right we've got uh oxygen um what's happening is we're we're starting to suffocate the animals that are in the ocean and that has implications right a reduction in in in Ocean wildlife and of course that's really important to a lot of communities not just ours um and so I I think this is something that we all everyone in the planet should be concerned about um because you know this isn't a problem that's just going to magically go away |
| 1:00:16 | uh and so we have to be vigilant all right we have to be active um and we also need to to be involved and think about really creative ways to engage a lot of people in in these challenges and these problems because it's important to more than just us scientists and research great thank you if I could follow up on that with the Debbie Debbie given what we just discussed in his answer you talked about the biological thumb and how is that being impacted by this climate change right so all all of those things that |
| 1:00:54 | kakani just talked about are gonna affect uh the distribution of animals in the sea their abundance and so just to give a couple of examples uh the the changing range of organisms in the in the tropics and subtropics we tend to have much smaller zooplankton and as the water warms their ranges are moving northward and they're smaller animals they produce a smaller thinking fecal pellets there's there's not they're displacing larger more polar animals which produce bigger particles um so that's that's one example that's |
| 1:01:42 | going to decrease the strength of the biological carbon pump another example the migrating animals diiel vertical migrators some of them low oxygen zones are a barrier to their migration so as the oxygen the low oxygen zones in the ocean expand as you have the migrators are not going to be going down as deep as they used to when they're going down to their daytime resident steps and so they won't be carrying that carbon from the surface waters as deep as they used to and so it's not going to be sequestered for as |
| 1:02:26 | long so those are just a couple of examples how all those things I could kind of talk about that those are going to affect the organisms and the pump it uh Ken if you we have seen both from krakani and debris answers that climate impacts are deteriorating the health of the oceans even that and we still manipulate the ocean to take in more carbon dioxide are we producing a solution or are we making matters worse and I think that's a question right we don't know whether we could at at some scale and whether we should and I think |
| 1:03:12 | that's really the regret I have as we stop doing some of these iron experiments due to some public pressure 15 20 years ago and so we don't have a lot of answers that we could have by now it can take five or ten years just looking at one of those circles iron fertilization before I can give you some maybe quantitative numbers on how we might intentionally responsibly remove carbon in some areas what those effects would be and again I think today what we're seeing is preparing that to doing nothing and I |
| 1:03:45 | think that's what we all want to avoid you know you just open up the newspaper everywhere we live someone you know is experiencing some consequence of climate change and so I think it's on us to look hard to get an answer to that question so I'm not trying to punt on it but I think that's what we really have to do is get the science get the research and move in multiple ways forward to see if we can alter that status quo I mean clearly we need to know a lot more about the biological pump and you |
| 1:04:15 | know how it is impacted by the climate impacts and what might happen with you know whatever that you're suggesting um is there anything that the panel as a whole or any of you can say what is it that we need to know on an urgent basis to understand and find these Solutions understand it more about the biological pump and there's a hardware people in this audience you know come together and next week talking about all of our uncertainties right the science we need and I think you know the gaps sometimes |
| 1:04:53 | I know it's not going to almost ask you you know when we talk about the changing biological pump it's often single stories of certain groups of animals in a certain location we really just don't have that distributed understanding of the carbon cycle and particularly this carbon flux the Marine snowfall and we do know it varies from place to place season to season you know some other reasons without pellets are none but putting that larger picture together is what the scientific Community is really |
| 1:05:23 | challenged to do over these next years and it's not going to be easy how many oral views would we need to too many I want to do that I don't need an autonomous vehicles yeah and I'd say something encouraging about these past three days of meetings is really the mix of disciplines that we've been able to get here and I think you really need the biologists and the ecologists and the social scientists to be participants in trying to assess the potential impacts of chemical solutions to the um climate |
| 1:05:54 | problem that we've created that's because we don't know how far we can actually Tinker with this biological pump without having more um or difficulties than we anticipate uh Debbie was just explaining that the oxygen minimum zone is a barrier for migration for many species Waters if you are adding more nutrients into the water column and hence potentially expanding this oxygen minimum zone is that going to create an additional barrier to migration and your carbon will not actually get below that so we need to know how all these species |
| 1:06:27 | of puzzles fit together and we need to be humble and I think show respect for the ecosystem right so thank you now it's your turn we have two um two microphones and if you could kindly raise your hand and please keep your question as brief as possible and if you can also direct it to one of the panelists that would be helpful and we also have some online questions but I'll come to that but let me first take the gentleman way at the back um yeah right good evening well thank you presenters that was very great please |
| 1:07:13 | can you throw more light on how the business Community will be more engaged because they are the beneficiaries of Science and policy thank you who would like to address that anybody from the panel because they question about bringing them in more to support the science my comment was going to be on the CDR side on the commercialization of carbon removal seems have been happening right away right if we talk a billion tons of carbon at a hundred dollars a ton we're talking an economy that doesn't exist that could be hundreds of billions |
| 1:07:55 | of dollars and right now there's a wild west scramble to kind of come up with ways to be part of that and that's that's part of the business that's why I asked I'm not sure I like that model in a way that they're moving faster than we can provide answers they have one or two scientists trying to come up with a way to make a bigger dent in carbon but not necessarily following the full ecological impacts or long-term or Downstream effects I think that is worrisome to me so that side of this uh |
| 1:08:27 | whether we market for the best way forward they said they could scale to those numbers pretty quickly but we certainly don't want to start something with CDO removal that has as harmful effect as fossil fuel emissions did in the first place now where I was reflecting to is you're talking about policy that will mitigate or reduce the impact of climate change now the business communities are the one benefiting from the research of the science and they are the one benefiting from the politicians what will be their role to conserve the |
| 1:09:09 | 30 by 30. that's what I'm reflecting to thank you we'll give it a try well we need the business Community involved in actually finding ways to restrain commercial behavior for the better this better good of the planet that was they need to be part of the solutions as well I think Ken's concern is when people are looking at new technologies on tested Technologies and what their impacts could be and if you try to scale them up before we have a international governance system in place an appropriate environmental impact |
| 1:09:42 | assessment in place than we we could be in serious trouble but the business Community is engaged but perhaps not as much as they might be and wider Circles of you know helping to restore coral reefs in Tropical Islands of helping to reduce CO2 emissions themselves by looking up their own Supply chains how do we act to um behavioral responsibility in our own CO2 emissions or those so there's many ways that business can contribute and they're welcome to contribute don't want to get ahead of ourselves uh in the game of who could |
| 1:10:19 | make the most money out of CO2 right um I mean the business Community has a vital role and that role first and foremost is if they are facing their business activities on burning fossil fuels is stopping them and second using the opportunities that we have you know as presented by the panelists in terms of trying to find answers so that whatever intervention that we make is going to be the right one and then comes the treaty procedures and the market mechanisms and we can deal with it at that time that's when the business |
| 1:10:56 | Community could benefit from it so any other questions yes right in the front Ray Schmidt uh Woods or graphic institution uh one thing you haven't mentioned is that warming ocean is also a more stratified ocean so it's slowing down the physical pump uh the part of the ocean uptake of CO2 relies on cold water at high latitudes CO2 and uh so that's slowing down and the stratification is inhibiting vertical mixing which is in decreasing ocean productivity I think there's no doubt that we need to enhance ocean productivity if only for |
| 1:11:41 | the protein to feed 10 billion people um and the the last point I'll make is relating to this last question we've just experienced the warmest we are experiencing the warmest year on record the hottest summer on record uh incredible floods places they've never seen them uh wildfires and droughts Tropical Islands burning up I think the need is enormous we have to act quickly on climate change and people are in the busy Community the whole world needs Solutions and um I think there's going to be pressure |
| 1:12:21 | on a slow in decisive scientists uh to move and to move quickly so I think the challenge for for all of us how do we get that research done so we can make wise decisions because the pressure is enormous we need Solutions we need them quickly that's a nice comment thank you um anybody would like to respond to this yeah I might have something to respond to that I mean as we know right climate change these these Global emissions right it's a big problem um but you know the ocean is one of many solutions that |
| 1:12:59 | we're looking at um for example this is a something that I I think I spent a lot of time thinking about lately you know the transportation sector right that alone contributes about 30 of the greenhouse gases right that we are struggling to reduce and while yes we want to embrace new technologies there are existing less sexy solutions that will actually have a massive dent in in that budget and that is public transportation cycling infrastructure pedestrian infrastructure trains I'm not talking new new |
| 1:13:35 | technology I'm talking about things we know how to do we just have to implement them at scale we're seeing that being done in other places we're not seeing that being done in the United States so that can be done regardless of what we're doing in the ocean and I think right the whole point is we have to utilize all of our options to to address this this challenge that does like I said I mean the urgency I I I know your feeling I mean it takes decades to Start programs at NSF to get the resources and so we basically with |
| 1:14:08 | EXO is basically started the program before we had that in place thinking that if we can present these to you know philanthropies agencies individuals they could make a difference we can put this together much faster we have the tools to go out and do some of these experiments today tomorrow as soon as we can get those ships and permits so I think the traditional mode of doing science really doesn't apply and some of the encourage you see some of the questions we're asking are just really basic almost like Engineering Systems |
| 1:14:39 | engineering as much as science how much can we get out in the case of CDO the atmosphere how durable other effects and we've got to find ways to do that more quickly than a traditional 35-year history of studying the biological pump that's what's motivating me right now but I think what we've been hearing is this is not just an engineering solution perhaps this is a biological solution that an ecosystem that also is going to respond in as yet unknown ways so we have a responsibility to move not recklessly but with full awareness |
| 1:15:18 | of what the consequences are and I think as kaikani said we have many solutions quickly to hand that can be deployed rapidly and some of these more untested Solutions and yes I mean I would agree we need to do some testing and understand what the consequences would be what the potential Effectiveness will be but I think we do have the weight of the world's responsibility and equity in mind was this going to affect who has access to these Technologies and how are they being exploit in a way that doesn't |
| 1:15:51 | benefit some Nations and others we could have new causes for World War thank you uh yes right to the front yes thank you Craig McLean uh my question is towards industry and to follow the gentleman's question as to roles of Industry when science pursues something new like this the Integrity of the institution is to publish one's work when the private sector pursues initiatives like this the institutional Integrity is to claim one's work as proprietary for the purposeful gain in Revenue so are there comments from the |
| 1:16:34 | panelists as to how we can guide both academic research publicly funded or privately funded academic research would largely publish how do we deal with the potential of private interests for profit and what the results might be if they're not optimistic and how do we make sure that we find out about that rather than just continuing to buy a service that is not productive thank you thank you anyone would like to comment on that I mean maybe is a bit naive but I would really love to see the business Community take on the similar code of |
| 1:17:13 | conduct right could they behave in this ethical same standards we all have the same standards for moving forward so then it wouldn't really matter whether it's commercially or not someone could make a profit doing really good things for the planet right so but I think if they're more upfront about their standards that they're using and if they're going to be open if they're going to be behind a closed door with their intellectual property and not sharing I think the more open we can make that process and get them to agree |
| 1:17:44 | and I would think that would help the bottom line because perhaps if people see value in that the price per ton for that type of carbon removal would be higher than for some you know back alley business at this sells you a piece of paper and that's mostly what's happening right now and so I think getting them to sign on to a code of conduct and and really responsible mrv monitoring reporting verification standards that are independent would go a long way maybe to bringing them in as part of this solution |
| 1:18:15 | but I just to I think you've raised a very important question and my fear would be that a code of conduct is not really sufficient to um just incentivize the proprietary interest that will arise in this context so I think it deserves much further consideration and probably government intervention to actually try to ensure that these Technologies are open that they're verifiable and that they're tested and that they're presented in a credible way otherwise we're going to get into the same situation we had in |
| 1:18:48 | 2007 which is what Kenneth complaining setback that the research field we really need to develop these Technologies and to understand where we are going with it the question that I have for you is we oftentimes say we know more about the Dark Side of the Moon than what we have in our own oceans I mean you have shown us this afternoon and other things and so what more does it take to make that technology a developing those kinds of Technologies and making them more economically viable so that we know everything I mean Ken |
| 1:19:23 | talked about mrv I mean again we need technologies to monitor those things what do you feel about that in terms of scaling in terms of what what we need to do is it governmental intervention is it the private sector you know all of them and it's all of it no I mean I think it's you know it's a challenging problem especially when you think about historically the ways in which we've been observing the ocean right the the activities that we normally do right is very siled certain institutions have access to deep |
| 1:19:58 | sea through research vessels or robots and that you know isn't widely shared or easily accessible and so it's a you know we know that's a big Challenge and there's a couple of you know things that are percolating up that um look really good like good options um we're starting to see people focusing on creating low-cost Solutions but when I say low cost I don't mean low capabilities I'm talking about you know something that is low cost and capable um and and is streamlined and and easy |
| 1:20:35 | to use for individuals with you know minimal training but also thinking a lot too about not just getting the data but also analyzing that data right there's a lot of information that our community has already collected that's why anytime I hear someone say we know more about the moon or Mars and we do the ocean that is probably not true we have collected a ton of information we've published a ton of papers but really if we want to fill these observational gaps we need the ability to scale not only |
| 1:21:07 | our observations but our ability to analyze this information as it comes in so I mentioned you know artificial intelligence but you know what I've thought a lot about more recently is you know how do you engage people from lots of different backgrounds not just experts uh in in these this challenge right because you know if we want to be able to successfully understand how these activities let's say new technologies uh carbon dioxide removal like how that impacts these let's say biological communities you have to not |
| 1:21:42 | only just observe them once right we have to monitor them repeatedly so how are we going to do that at scale and this is where I mean inviting lots of individuals into you know Assist us with this process I think it's going to be incredibly important there is a great example in our our meeting of this today about um uh cruises with remotely operated vehicles that were operating around the world and streaming the footage from that live where any scientist or citizen could watch it and um use that information |
| 1:22:23 | count animals and identify them and we we have some great technology for sharing this information very widely and I think in our field the data is very open we're we're required to get the data in a timely manner so other people can use it so I think we're on the right track and like you said the urgency there's yeah we we need to come together in a more cohesive way so we can get that information all that good data to people who can take it and analyze it and help us thank you Phil any questions from online |
| 1:23:07 | yes Phil Renault here from the otz program manager I'm kind of representing the virtual audience online tonight um a lot of lively interactions from the online community and obviously a lot of well-informed um people online tonight and there's there's frustration um being voiced here about our Collective inaction um to to solve this problem by using the ocean there's also there's also some skepticism about um actually moving the needle on the carbon budget by some of these methods that Ken talked about iron fertilization |
| 1:23:49 | and changing the alkalinity but um and there's a lot of great specific questions about the biological carbon pump in here but I was most fascinated by a question that said if if we had all the billionaires in the world on this webinar and tonight and they were willing to stroke a check to all of us to actually solve this problem what would that look like how much how much money would we really need when you look at how much money we spent to put that beautiful James Webb Space Telescope the billions we spent on that |
| 1:24:29 | um and what little money's going to the ocean um do you have a figure in your head about how what scale of funding it would take to really move this needle [Laughter] specific to the CDR the six methods and we looked at that we came up with estimates around one billion dollars over five to ten years and that included not just the Natural Science but social science governance things to test just those six and I've heard from other groups that say that's a fast underestimate so that might sound like a lot of money |
| 1:25:10 | to people here but again if you think of this Emerging Market that's coming forward already it's already at a billion dollars plus for voluntary credits this really isn't a lot of money to get the answers we need so I I don't think these are astronomical costs relative to the cost of what the return might be or just the damage and loss and suffering that comes with it around the globe so I I think this is a cheap thing we should be doing this all hands on deck get those people in the room we need to talk to them and |
| 1:25:45 | we are talking to some of them getting responses and I think another high level question from the audience was if you look at climate change and what's happened in the Industrial Revolution and the rate of fossil fuel emissions and in light of what's happening today with these extreme weather events um what's our world going to look like in 50 years from now and um that you know here we are in the midst of a a strong hurricane going up the coast and what can we expect to see in our world 50 years from now |
| 1:26:23 | um we've just had I think this summer I feel like we've turned a corner in my mind this this summer with some of the fires we've seen and for example people on the East Coast now experiencing [Music] um you know Ash from fires and it's like oh we just heard about that but until you experience it you're like whoa is this going to be our you know our world is the your years from now and feeling it in a very personal way I you know we're gonna have um yeah we're gonna have to adapt people |
| 1:27:04 | are going to be not being able to live in some of the places they're living now probably within peers and we're going to lose more species Notions so there's a lot of yeah we do need to act those are just a few more I would highly recommend that people read Ministry for the future so I can Stanley Robinson which provides sort of a beginning view of the potential suffering and magnitude of the harm but also some of the crazy solutions that are then tried because we haven't done anything today and the consequences that |
| 1:27:44 | are borne by Future Generations so there are multiple Pathways towards a future that are either sustainable or unsustainable or sustainable for some and unsustainable for many that was so we really have to choose now what future we occur and what actions we need to take now such as keeping it in the ground um before we try to start thinking about what solutions that are going to cost us far more in the long run and may or may not actually work that was so I think as kakani said we need to integrate and immediately Implement those actions that |
| 1:28:22 | are actionable now if we are going to create a pathway towards otherwise your consequence is our beliefs hey thank you there are two um right in the front uh those will be two last questions uh you sir yeah oh thank you yes um I wonder if we and it's just a question for everyone uh maybe we should help the business Community by offering up the questions they should ask and I don't know what those are but as a business person a lot of times we don't well what what's the problem we're supposed to solve |
| 1:29:00 | from a business perspective and just a comment it's a question and we take the next one also and then you know we'll go back to the panelists hi Paul Workman science diplomacy Center uh following us on the observation about discontent in the community in general sense um the Paris Accord is held out as a as an important step in terms of addressing the earth's climate um the word water isn't mentioned once in the Paris Accord um if the objective is to come up with combinations of governance mechanisms |
| 1:29:38 | and built infrastructure to sustainably migrate into the future presumably forever in terms of climate how do we bring water into these International governance Solutions dealing with climate Christina I think that's for you I think we need another conference that was um I I think policy makers at least the United Nations are tempting to deal with these issues but still in a very siled basis they recently had a freshwater conference and then they have a climate change conference so we probably need to get more physical |
| 1:30:20 | oceanographers involved in these discussions about the importance of water and its origin in the ocean and how it ends up on land and the relationship with salinity I think it's critical questions but it's the freshwater debate that is going to be of most urgent concern because we are starting to run out of fresh water and we are going and get many potential conflicts arising over how we're not sustaining our current Water Resource so yeah I mean there's a huge part of the problem that's generally based from the |
| 1:30:54 | terrestrial perspective but we need an Earth Systems perspective of a religion but is there any 30 second closing comments from the panelists starting with Ken and coming this way let's just what would you like the audience to take away both here and online I mean the bile of a carbon pump matters it is a true hero and so I think this urgency that we're seeing with the climate crisis we don't have to really explain the audiences but the value of that service to our planet I think is something we have to do and study and I |
| 1:31:30 | think that's that's on us but it's also on trying to convince others those billionaires out there to help make that happen our governments our agencies and then do proper policy and decisions do that in a responsible way but I'm not going to wait for those governance agreements to be all signed and ratified we don't have to we should start now next thing Debbie yeah I think I would just say um how important education is just educating ourselves all of us about um you know the importance of the ocean |
| 1:32:05 | and the um the ecosystem services that it provides to humankind through food and all sorts of things that we humans need and so just just taking that step to educate yourself and your and your neighbor and to and for all of us to be more more active in saying yeah the oceans are important and we care about them and we we need to have an understanding of them to that policy makers can do the right thing thank you yeah yeah um uh Dr David Ho who's a professor at University of Hawaii uh wrote a piece I think it was on the Science magazine a |
| 1:32:54 | couple months years I don't know pandemic ago and one of the things that really resonated me with this piece was that in all of human history we've never successfully removed an environmental pollutant at scale you know what we did we just stopped releasing that environmental pollutants and we allowed the planet to resolve that for us right and so I think you know it's it's wonderful to think about you know additional Solutions trying to figure out ways to perhaps have the ocean sequester more carbon but if we don't |
| 1:33:31 | stop right emissions burning of fossil fuels all these discussions are going to fall away so I think you know being very proactive I mean as a private citizen I think I could say this I think people should be voting and talking to people who are supportive for for really reducing our greenhouse gas emissions like that without that this isn't going to work you have the last word what she said [Applause] but on that note I want to thank all of you for your time here despite the weather you braved it and you're here |
| 1:34:19 | and thank all the people that joined us online and of course I want to thank in particular Mars for making it possible for us to have this colloquium and most importantly I want all of you to join me in thanking a panelist Peter Thompson and James Cameron for their invaluable insights foreign |