CARBON CAPTURE TECHNOLOGY BBC BITESIZE HOW TO
CARBON CAPTURE TECHNOLOGY BBC BITESIZE FREE

The beauty of restoring whale populations is that there is plenty of space in the ocean – space once filled with whales. But tree-planting requires a scarce resource: terrestrial land, which may already be in use as another valuable habitat or farmland.

CARBON CAPTURE TECHNOLOGY BBC BITESIZE HOW TO

There have been various other proposals for how to achieve this reduction, including tree-planting and stimulating phytoplankton blooms by adding iron to the ocean, a form of geoengineering known as iron fertilisation. What this means is that restoring whale populations to their pre-whaling numbers could be an important tool in tackling climate change, sequestering carbon both directly and indirectly, and thus helping to make a small dent in the enormous volume of CO2 emitted by fossil fuels every year. 'We need to think of whaling as being a tragedy that has removed a huge organic carbon pump from the ocean that would have been having a much larger multiplying effect on phytoplankton productivity and the ocean's ability to absorb carbon,' says Vicki James, policy manager at Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC). Their iron-rich faeces creates the perfect growing conditions for phytoplankton. These creatures may be microscopic, but, taken together, phytoplankton have an enormous influence on the planet's atmosphere, capturing an estimated 40% of all CO2 produced – four times the amount captured by the Amazon rainforest.

Whales feed in the deep ocean, then return to the surface to breathe and poo. The tides of excrement that these mammals produce are also surprisingly relevant to the climate. The US currently has 236 million cars,' he says.īut whales are not only valuable in death. 'This is a lot, but 15 million cars do this in a single year. But when the carcass is prevented from sinking to the seabed – instead, the whale is killed and processed – that carbon is released into the atmosphere.Īndrew Pershing, a marine scientist at the University of Maine and an author of that study, estimates that over the course of the 20th Century whaling added about 70 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In the 2010 study, scientists found that before industrial whaling, populations of whales (excluding sperm whales) would have sunk between 190,000 to 1.9 million tonnes of carbon per year to the bottom of the ocean – that's the equivalent of taking between 40,000 and 410,000 cars off the road each year. When whales die, they sink to the ocean floor – and all the carbon that is stored in their enormous bodies is transferred from surface waters to the deep sea, where it remains for centuries or more.

CARBON CAPTURE TECHNOLOGY BBC BITESIZE FREE

'In the open ocean, the carbon cycle is assumed to be free of direct human influences.'īut that assumption neglects the surprising impact of whaling. 'On land, humans directly influence the carbon stored in terrestrial ecosystems through logging and the burning of forests and grasslands,' according to a 2010 scientific paper. Their bodies are enormous stores of carbon, and their presence in the ocean shapes the ecosystems around them.įrom the depths of the ocean, these creatures are also helping to determine the temperature of the planet – and it's something that we've only recently started to appreciate. Whales, particularly baleen and sperm whales, are among the largest creatures on Earth. What rarely registers, however, is the lost opportunity for carbon sequestration. It can also be upsetting to witness a creature so magnificent in water reduced to lifeless blubber on land.

It can make people curious – beached whales can do strange things, like explode. Seeing a whale stranded on a beach often provokes a strong reaction.

Carbon capture technology bbc bitesize