THE ULTIMATE BLUE REVOLUTION

More than 70% of the Earth surface is covered by oceans, which hold 97% of the available water.  The ocean is deeper--Mariana Trench at 36,070 feet--than Mt. Everest is tall (29,029 feet, or 5.5 miles).  The average depth of our oceans is 2.3 miles (12,144 feet).  

You would think that the lower you go, at some point, the deep ocean water should get warmer, for the core of our planet is hot (more than 9000 F).  But that is not the way our oceans work, for the deeper you go, they actually get colder, reaching around 4 C at around 1000 meters, or 39 F at 3280 feet.

Why?  Cold water has a higher density than warm water.  The colder temperatures from the Arctic and Antarctica circulate like a global conveyor belt, or thermohaline circulation, slowly moving through the ocean depths. One complete cycle can take 1000 years.

Another interesting fact about our oceans is that the near surface is a nutrient desert because micro-life consumes these minerals.  However, much of what thrives in the photic zone (where the sun shines), eventually die, and drop to greater depths while decomposing back to the same original chemical composition, called the Redfield Ratio.  These concentrations (phosphate and nitrate) increase with depth, as shown to the right.  Most of our seafood comes from those regions of our oceans where natural upwelling occurs, bringing these nutrients up towards the surface.

Thus, in the middle of the ocean you have ideal conditions for productivity:

• The temperature difference between the surface waters and deeper fluid below 3000 feet can be combined through ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) to produce electricity and freshwater.

• However, if this artificially upwelled deep ocean water can somehow be maintained in the photic zone, this will be like getting free fertilizer to initiate and support biological growth.
• Thus, marine biomass plantations can be supported and next generation fisheries can be initiated.

• Thus, by closing the growth cycle from phytoplankton to copepods/zooplankton to small fish to larger predators, you can create an ultimate ocean ranch.
• All terrestrial farms use fossil fuels and emit carbon dioxide.
• Ocean farms not only will be in harmony with the environment using OTEC, but potentially enhancive, for global climate change can be remediated.  The carbon dioxide coming up with the deep water should be absorbed by marine plants.  Plus, this growth might also help absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere with the addition of some iron.  Much of this remains controversial, but nevertheless worthy of exploration.

• Also, too, if a sufficient number of these Blue Revolution platforms are logistically placed, hurricanes can be prevented from forming.  Stephen Salter (right), Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold have a patent to use old tires and long tubes to keep ocean surface temperatures below 26.5 C (79.7 F).  Sounds like a cheap way to do this, but there still remain associated costs and no actual profit.  This is the same Salter, retired from the University of Edinburg, whose mechanical duck for wave power has mostly failed.

• Bill Gates has another patent, with Ken Caldeira of Stanford, to tap the deeper cold water and spray it from a moored ship.  This one is a lot more expensive and also has not gained any traction.  Of course, no real profit, save for the reduction of damages if it does prevent hurricanes from forming.  The Ultimate Blue Revolution will not only accomplish that task, but also, in parallel, be a money-making enterprise.

In the meantime, what protection do these floating cities and industrial parks have against hurricanes?  Easy, no hurricane has ever crossed the equator, something to do the nature of the Coriolis force that creates them.  Thus, 1000 MW pods supporting a million people each will someday be located at or near the equator.  Later, as hurricanes are prevented, they can also be located within the 20 degree latitude region.

But isn't it hot and uncomfortable at the equator?  The deep ocean water after utilized by the OTEC facility to produce electricity and freshwater will still be very cold, and can subsequently be passed through heat exchangers for air conditioning, before release into the sea to fertilize micro- and macro-biomass and next generation fisheries.

The Ultimate Blue Revolution will in time number a thousand or more mega-facilities for a billion or more people total.  Eight years ago, one of my HuffPos was titled The World Population in 2050 Could Well be 7 Billion.  Today, Planet Earth has 7.5 billion, and growing.  My point was that, as the economy of all countries improve, someday, the population will peak and begin to fall, as is already happening in Japan, and should in Europe by 2021.  The United Nations has projected that this peak will occur in 2100 at nearly 11 billion.  But how many people in 2200 or 3000?

So I mis-projected by a few years.  However, I still think that an ideal  population for this world, considering the available resources and projecting future average consumption with recycle, is less than two billion.  This range was also selected by Paul Ehrlich, noted for his Population Bomb.  Can you believe he published his best seller 51 years ago?  Gizmodo suggests essentially the same.  So someday, with the Ultimate Blue Revolution, half the world population, or more, could well be living on the ocean.  Perhaps it will take into 2300 or 3000, but that is my ultimate projection.

That, essentially, will be the Ultimate Blue Revolution.  Some time after 2100, but perhaps 3000, half of our population will live at-sea in mostly self-sufficiency.  If the latter time frame, then everyone will have been genetically engineered to be smart, athletic and good looking.  The aging gene will have been checked, and births will only be allowed to keep the world population at an optimal level.

My very first Huffington Post publication had to do with world peace.  Humanity should by 3000, and, hopefully as early as 2100, attain world peace.  The U.S. this year will spend more on war than the next seven nations combined.  If you add Japan as the eighth, then those countries will in total spend a couple more billions than the USA.  Can you imagine how much more productive our nation especially, and whole world too, will be when all these "wasted" funds are instead applied to infrastructure, education, environmental enhancement and productive causes?

Only with world peace and a check on global warming will it be appropriate to plan for space colonies and missions to Mars and beyond.  Sure, scan the skies for messages from extraterrestrial intelligence, for this effort will be a hundred times cheaper than sending humans into outer space.  Ah, the possibility of capturing the Encyclopedia Galactica streaming in from outer space beamed by a civilization a billion years ahead of us is worth a shot.

One top bar headlines this week in the Star-Advertiser tossed out:  Hawaii telescopes identify car-size asteroid blasting toward Earth.  So  I went on to read the article and found out that this "killer" merely burned up in the atmosphere and tiny remnants fell into the Caribbean south of Puerto Rico.

If another asteroid becomes a threat, like what happened 65 million years ago, killing off the dinosaurs, first, the odds are really low for the next million years, and second, we should have the technology in time to shoo it away.  If Bruce Willis and his crew accomplished that task in Armageddon more than two decades ago, we should be able to do that again in the long-term future.

Here are five more potential cosmic catastrophes, and none of them particularly worries me.  The Sun will someday grow in size at the end of its life cycle and burn Planet Earth to a crisp, but that is said to be 7.6 billion years from now.

For now, let's focus on the most promising profit-making opportunity to save Planet Earth and Humanity from global warming.  Whether the Blue Revolution develops to become the Ultimate Blue Revolution is beyond even my vivid imagination.

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