The Ocean, CDR's Sleeping Giant
The sea has quietly run the largest carbon-removal operation on Earth for millennia. Understand how, and the entire field of ocean carbon removal snaps into focus. Part 2 of 7 In Part 1, I left you with a number that deserves a second look: the ocean has already absorbed roughly 30% of all the carbon dioxide humanity has emitted and close to 90% of the excess heat our emissions have trapped. It holds some 42 times as much carbon as the entire atmosphere does. No factory we will ever build comes close. That raises the obvious question this post answers: if the ocean is already such a formidable carbon sink, how does it do it — and can we help it do more without breaking it? Once you understand the machinery, every company, technology, and debate in ocean carbon removal stops looking like a jumble of unrelated ideas and reveals itself as variations on just two themes. How the ocean breathes carbon The sea pulls carbon out of the air through two great “pumps” that have be...