But in Canada, it was a Liberal federal government that acted to put a price on carbon pollution and it is the current Conservative Party that is opposed. The latter has started an “axe-the-tax” campaign that has encouraged street protests and buy-in from many of Canada’s provincial premiers.

On April 1, 2024, the federal government raised the price of carbon pollution with an average increase of 3.5 cents per litre of gasoline and diesel, as well as proportionate increases on other fossil fuels by raising the benchmark $15 CDN to $80 per ton. Every ton of CO2 or methane (CH4) emitted is, therefore, accounted for through Canadian purchases of fossil fuels. Some have criticized the government for choosing April Fool’s Day to increase the price, but the truth is the date coincides with the start of the federal government’s fiscal year which begins every April. The $15 annual increase is slated to continue each April until at least 2030 when carbon pricing will reach $170 per ton.

A few years ago I joined Citizens’ Climate Lobby Canada (CCL), a voluntary group focused on lobbying the government to work towards a more livable future.  CCL has been a staunch advocate for carbon pricing as an effective way to deal with climate change. It has taken this stance because it sees carbon pricing as pivotal to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, driving innovation, and safeguarding economic competitiveness. What is interesting is that CCL is a group of everyday citizens who have taken on the task of becoming more informed about carbon pollution and have been sharing what they have learned with their political representatives. It has proved to be an effective means of moving forward with government environmental policy related to climate change mitigation.

Recently, a note from CCL contained an Open Letter from Economists on Canadian Carbon Pricing signed by approximately 200 Canadian economists. The letter presented evidence and facts to back “economically sensible policies to reduce emissions at a low cost.” It looked at affordability concerns for average Canadians. It addressed the impact of pricing on business competitiveness and the overall Canadian economy.

The open letter contains 5 claims by critics of carbon pricing. I have summarized these below:

Critics’ Claim #1: Carbon pricing won’t reduce GHG emissions.

What the evidence shows: Not only does carbon pricing reduce emissions, but it does so at a lower cost than other approaches.  

Critics’ Claim #2: Carbon pricing drives up the cost of living and is a major cause of inflation.

What the evidence shows: Canadian carbon pricing has a negligible impact on overall inflation.

Critics’ Claim #3: It makes little sense to have both a carbon price and rebates. 

What the evidence shows: The price-and-rebate approach acts as an incentive to reduce carbon emissions as the price rises while maintaining most households’ overall purchasing power.

Critics’ Claim #4: Carbon pricing harms Canadian business competitiveness.

What the evidence shows:  Canada’s carbon-pricing scheme is designed to help businesses reduce emissions at low cost, while competing in the emerging low-carbon global economy.  

Critics’ Claim #5:  Carbon pricing isn’t necessary.

What the evidence shows:  Here the critics are right. Canada could abandon carbon pricing and still hit our climate targets by using regulations and subsidies—but it would be much more costly. 

The CCL note contained the following:

1. Since the inception of federal carbon pricing in 2019, Canada has witnessed a notable decrease of almost 8% in GHG emissions, with projections indicating that carbon pricing will contribute substantially to emissions reductions by 2030.
2. Evidence from the Bank of Canada indicates carbon pricing has had a negligible impact on overall inflation. Factors such as disruptions from climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions have primarily influenced inflation rates.
3. Carbon-pricing revenues are being rebated to households, ensuring that the policy economically unburdens most Canadians. In some families, the rebates total more than what these families outlay when they purchase gasoline or diesel at the pump. Carbon pricing is a disincentive to use fossil fuels for energy needs. The dollars returned through rebates give householders more purchasing power. The Climate Action Network Canada, an umbrella group representing over 200 climate organizations, states that many Canadians have come to depend on quarterly rebates to meet basic needs.
4. Canada’s carbon pricing is designed to promote emission reduction without compromising business competitiveness. Industries are incentivized to adopt low-carbon practices through output-based pricing while remaining economically viable in the global marketplace.
5. While alternatives to carbon pricing exist such as the laws enacted in the United States where it appears resistance to putting a price on pollution comes from mostly conservative voices, these policies and the regulations required to enforce them cost more than the market-based carbon pricing in place in Canada.

Cathy Orlando is the National Director of CCL Canada. She describes Canada’s carbon-pricing policies as “exemplary in achieving all these objectives,” referring to reducing emissions, addressing affordability, maintaining business competitiveness and facilitating a transition to a low-carbon economic future.

Why the federal Conservative Party continues to balk at carbon pricing mystifies me since they have always believed that the market should dictate our future path, and have advocated market-based environmental policy in the past. Instead, the Conservative Party wants industry to invent solutions and the government to impose regulations.

The world has a plastic problem that we are late to the table to address. We have an ocean being filled with plastic and we are filling ourselves with it as well. Exposure to microplastic and nanoplastic (MNPs) is a health problem. MNPs are used widely in products. They are in the water we drink, and getting into our foods.

An observational study published in the New England Journal of Medicine recently describes the danger of MNPs found in plaque lining the carotid arteries of people. The study involved 304 patients and showed that 257, between ages 18 and 75, with asymptomatic artery disease had measurable levels of MNPs in their carotid arteries. Of these 58% had polyethylene and 12% had polyvinyl chloride in the plaque. Electron microscopy revealed visible, jagged-edged embedded MNP particles. The study concluded that those with detectable MNP levels were at a 4.5 times higher risk of heart attack or stroke at 34 months follow-up than those with no MNPs detected. Besides MNPs in arterial plaque, other studies have found plastic in breast milk, urine, blood, and lungs.

Microplastics today are everywhere. We are finding them in the deepest parts of the ocean and at the top of Mount Everest. It should be no wonder, therefore, that microplastics have invaded us.

Speaking of the ocean, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the North Pacific Ocean is a collection of marine debris the size of Texas and much of it is plastic. It is a collection of visible floating trash, microplastic and nanoplastic that has accumulated with origins from the countries of the Pacific Rim including North and South America, and Asia.

In 2019, the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, working with the Alfred Wegener Institute, conducted a five-week expedition across the Pacific Ocean and found significant amounts of plastic waste in marine protected areas. These sites were in addition to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Following a route drawn up by the SCUD (Surface Currents from Diagnostics) model, created at the Asia-Pacific Data-Research Center at the University of Hawaii, the expedition gathered surface water samples from Vancouver to Singapore (see image at the beginning of this article). The study noted wherever it went there was plastic. No sampling came up empty indicating the plastic pollution problem is much worse than previously thought.

What were the methodologies chosen for sampling? The first was an eye survey by teams of two scientists stationed on deck throughout the transit. The second used nets with mesh sizes of 0.3 millimetres that were towed to do sampling at nine locations. Those conducting the study noted an abundance of degraded smaller plastic fragments suggesting further degradation was likely which would mean large amounts of MNPs present. The limitations of the methodologies used meant MNPs were not captured.

One can assume MNPs were present throughout the ocean environment traversed. The amount and volume is unknown. If MNPs were abundant in the surface waters of the Pacific, what kind of threat did they pose to ocean life considering the noted threat to humans as described above in the New England Journal of Medicine study?

In 2022, the United Nations began working on a global plastic pollution agreement that will become legally binding this year. Called the Global Partnership on Plastic Pollution and Marine Litter, it is creating a database to track the lifecycle of plastic, analyze environmental, biological, and socio-economic impacts, look at technological innovation, share financial and capacity-building resources, and list action plans across the planet. Among the many resources created so far are a marine microplastics database and pollution map, a marine litter database and litter watch, a global plastic watch and more.

In 2022 the World Health Organization published a 156-page document covering dietary and exposure to MNP guidelines. I wonder, therefore, why the United Nations hasn’t incorporated MNPs into its global partnership strategy.

As land ice on Greenland, other Arctic islands, and Antarctica melts, the water enters the ocean. This, not only causes sea levels to rise but also redistributes the planet’s mass with the added water giving Earth an expanded waistband at the equator.

An article appearing on March 27, 2024, in the journal Nature, describes how the atomic clock based on the precise vibrations of cesium atoms and used by computing networks to keep time can go out of sync with Earth days bound to the planet’s rotation.

Since 1972 a method to keep the two in synch has added leap seconds 27 times with the last added on December 31, 2016. Meanwhile, Earth’s spin continues to slow by a couple of milliseconds (0.001 seconds) per century.

There are fluctuations. For example, June 29, 2022, saw length of day (a term scientists use for precise timekeeping) equal to one planetary rotation faster by 1.59 milliseconds. This marked the shortest day on record since the atomic clock was adopted.

Today, the world’s official time is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). It is used to regulate clocks across time zones around the planet. UTC replaced Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), a term still used, and facilitates international communication, navigation, scientific research, and commerce.

Before the discovery that climate change was altering the speed of Earth’s rotation, the known physical forces impacting length of day were the Moon, the Sun and the spin of the planet’s solid iron core. The Moon causes ocean tidal bulges which subtly change the planet’s shape. The Sun’s gravitational pull causes the side of Earth facing it to bulge affecting the spin. Recently, scientists discovered that Earth’s solid core spins at a different rate than the planet’s surface and appears to be slowing down. The consequences of the latter have yet to be determined related to changes in length of day.

Until now, melting ice from atmospheric warming had never been considered a factor affecting length of day. Now geophysicists are concluding that human-caused climate change may play a bigger role in altering Earth’s spin rate. Instead of adding leap seconds, scientists are predicting we may introduce negative seconds to account for the planet’s changing rotation.

One of the Nature study article authors, Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the University of California San Diego, told CNN “Part of figuring out what is going to happen in global timekeeping … is dependent on understanding what is happening with the global warming effect …To me, the fact that human beings have caused the rotation of the Earth to change is kind of amazing.” Stated Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado who is not one of the paper’s authors, this could cause “a yikes moment for some computer applications.”

Our planet is more dynamic than previously thought. If melting ice speeds up rotation, what would massive amounts of ice in the Northern Hemisphere during the last Ice Age do? The flattening of the poles would have slowed the planet’s rotation.

Is anthropogenic global warming the only human influence on Earth’s spin? Last year, the American Geophysical Union published a letter in a scientific journal stating that humans had been using so much groundwater in the last two decades it was causing a shift in Earth’s mass causing the poles to move nearly a metre in the last two decades. In other words, human activity was tilting the planet.

The latest satellite data based on 25 years of observation shows that sea level rise by 2100 will double the original projections based on climate models. Originally the increase was expected to be a steady rate. But the data says something entirely different.

The cause is accelerated melting in Greenland and Antarctica with current projections indicating mean global sea levels will rise by 65 centimetres (26 inches). The implications for cities lying on coastlines are significant.

Steve Nerem, a professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at The University of Colorado – Boulder, who is working with NASA’s Sea Level Change project, believes the projected rise is a conservative estimate based on changes seen in the Arctic and Antarctic.

How is sea level measured? Since 1992, a series of satellites have been remotely monitoring the ocean surface using onboard altimeters. They initially observed an annual rise of 1.8 millimetres (0.07 inches) in 1993. Today the rise is 4.2 millimetres (0.17 inches) per year. The total rise since 1993 is 9.4 centimetres (4 inches).

The satellite data has been supplemented by tide gauge data collected for more than three decades. What is a tide gauge? It is an Earth-bound piece of monitoring equipment with sensors to record surrounding water level heights. Before we started measuring global sea level rise, tide gauges were used to support safe navigation along coastlines.

Gary Mitchum, at the College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, notes that the tide gauge data is “essential for determining the uncertainty in the global mean sea level acceleration estimate.” These Earth-based metrics provide backup to the satellite observations.

In the past, sea levels have dropped after volcanic eruptions and La Niña Southern Ocean oscillations, and have risen from thermal expansion during El Niños like the current strong one which no doubt has raised ocean levels temporarily.

The melting of polar ice from Greenland and Antarctica isn’t just contributing to rising seas. A 2021 Harvard study notes that when the glacial ice from these two areas melts it impacts the land lying beneath. We are still witnessing a phenomenon called isostatic rebound in North America from the last Ice Age which started 2.6 million years ago and ended in geological time very recently a mere 11,000 years ago.

Sophie Coulson is the lead author of the 2021 Harvard study published in Geophysical Research Letters. In an article in The Harvard Gazette, Coulson talked about the various forces imposed on Earth’s crust by tectonic movement. She stated, “We need to be able to separate…motion generated by modern-day ice-mass loss.” In addition, she noted that “Earth is actually still rebounding from that ice melting.”

Coulson is making reference to an observed phenomenon, that parts of North America continue to rise from the disappearance of the ice causing warping of the continental landmass hundreds of kilometres away. A good example is the land around the Chesapeake Bay warping downward as Pennsylvania does the opposite and rises to the northwest.

Another consequence of melting polar ice is changes to the composition of ocean surface water. Freshwater ice melt is diluting the saltwater. Freshwater’s lower specific gravity causes it to overlay heavier saltwater layers.

In addition, the land ice melt contributes to changes in the amount of sea ice exposing more surface water to the atmosphere with its increasing burden of carbon dioxide (CO2) from anthropogenic sources of pollution. The greater exposure means a warmer ocean surface which can then absorb more CO2 which creates carbonic acid which makes the Arctic Ocean more acidic, threatening regional biodiversity.

For humans on land, these dynamic forces represent a variety of challenges. If sea levels are accelerating, coastal communities will be further subjected to flooding. It means coastal freshwater aquifers will experience more saltwater intrusion. And if biodiversity within the ocean is negatively impacted, it means that communities dependent on the largesse of the ocean will face greater food insecurity.

Climate predictability is an important aspect of planning for farmers. It is equally important for cities and towns. In Canada, the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (CCCma) simulates Canada’s future climate from seasonal to hundred-year forecasts. CCCma has six models simulating global, regional, ocean and atmospheric changes. The ability to drill down to localities is not currently available. The last update on the government site bears a June 6, 2017 date stamp. A lot has happened to the world’s climate since these simulations were constructed. If I am a city manager looking for mitigation and adaptation strategies in the future, Canada’s federal effort to date needs work. 

The United States, on the other hand, has developed a far more robust climate simulation capacity. The Center for Climate Resilience and Decision Science (CCRDS) is located at The Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. It has launched a Climate Risk and Resilience Portal (ClimRR) for individuals, governments and organizations to study simulated future climate conditions from mid-century to 2100. 

CCRDS is using a supercomputer to manage and model the data. Local communities can examine current, mid-century and end-of-century climate data points and download Local Climate Projections Reports. The National Map Explorers tool provides historical baseline, mid-century and end-of-century heat indices, temperature maximum and minimums, degree days, fire weather indices, precipitation, drought and wind-speed projection maps for the entire country with the ability to drill down to specific towns, cities, counties and states. Data reports can be generated in CSV formats to populate spreadsheets and databases.

The portal offers sample cases to help users how to create similar ones for their localities. These use cases can allow public health officials and emergency response managers to prepare for extreme climate changes and update mitigation and adaptation plans. Communities with limited resources can use the climate vulnerability data to help apply for federal, state and philanthropic funding to build local resilience.

The supercomputer that hosts ClimRR is currently the second fastest in the world. Called Aurora (see picture above), it will soon be upgraded to become the fastest. Aurora is being used to train artificial intelligence weather models to help with extremely local forecasting. The granularity that ClimRR can produce using Aurora’s supercomputer horsepower will allow for neighbourhood-specific weather forecasts that predict precipitation leading to flooding, or thunderstorms spawning tornadoes. Aurora’s ability to do 2 billion-billion calculations per second will make it Earth’s most powerful climate change prediction tool.

From where does coffee come? The drink comes from the coffee bean which is produced by the Rubiaceae plant, an evergreen shrub that is cultivated on more than 12.5 million farms in over 80 countries.

Optimal growing conditions for Arabica exist between 400 and 1,200 metres (approximately 1,300 and 3,900 feet) in elevation in the tropics and between 1,000 and 2,100 metres (3,300 and 6,900 feet) at the equator.

The journal Frontiers in Plant Science in October 2021 included an article describing the plight of coffee noting that “climate conditions outside optimal ranges including heat waves and droughts…are expected to impact coffee production.”

For Central America, a prime coffee-growing region today, it means dramatic decreases in suitable conditions over the next 30 years while the opposite may become true for regions in East Africa and Asia where cultivation may increase. Besides changes in the geographic range of where coffee is planted, climate change will impact the quality of a cup of coffee.

The measured term for quality is the balanced cup. A balanced cup exhibits the right levels of acidity, flavour and aroma. The chemistry is a blend of a complex of caffeine and chemicals too long to mention here. The balanced cup is not just the end product of the environment where the beans are grown but also how they are harvested, processed and stored.

Coffee also faces a disease threat called Coffee Rust. It is a fungal infection that defoliates the shrubs and reduces yields. Rust can devastate farms and is increasingly immune to fungicides and other treatments. Fungicide application may be needed more than once through a growing season. It is expensive and often out of the price range of smallholder coffee farmers. The result is Rust epidemics that have broken out in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Brazil, Colombia, and Honduras causing significant drops in bean production.

None of the above is good news for coffee lovers. Forecasts indicate coffee bean production may decrease by half in 2050. To reverse this trend Arabica and Robusta beans need new places to grow. In the tropics and equatorial regions, coffee plants will need to move to higher ground where soil and precipitation may reduce yields and negatively impact the chemistry that produces the balanced cup.

Coffee drinkers should expect to pay higher prices to fuel their morning addiction. Hopefully, they won’t equally be asked to accept a less-than-perfect balanced cup.

An Alternative Way To Make A Cup of Coffee

Do coffee drinkers care if the perfect cup of java comes from a bean or a laboratory?

We may soon find out. Pluri Biotech is a Haifa, Israel-based company that has created a cell-based coffee. On its website, it states that Pluri Coffee provides “a sustainable alternative to traditional coffee production.” It is produced with 3D-cell-expansion technology using a bioreactor, leaves from a coffee plant, and 2% of the water agriculture uses to make coffee.

A Jerusalem Post article published in January quotes Pluri CEO, Yaky Yanay, who when he tried the first cup of coffee from the bioreactor noted that it tasted “just like coffee,” specifically Cafe Americano, a popular diluted espresso.

The Pluri Coffee product looks like instant coffee (see image above). Just add boiled water and drink for a perfect, balanced cup. Yanay claims that the process can duplicate all flavours of coffee. The company plans to launch a coffee-focused subsidiary.

Pluri also uses bioreactor technology to turn cells into other novel products including cultivated meats. The company has launched Ever After Foods to enter the mass market to produce what it calls “multiple novel plant nutrition solutions.”

• The Ansari-sponsored XPrize launched the commercial space tourist industry.
• The Google Lunar XPrize inspired private companies to send robotic landers to the Moon in return for a big cash reward. No company one the prize but Intuitive Machines’ lander, Odysseus, was one of the entries. Intuitive couldn’t meet the deadline but still went ahead with the project and on February 22, 2024, landed near the Moon’s south pole, albeit tilted over because of a broken landing strut.
• The Qualcomm $10 million XPrize challenged companies to build the equivalent of the Star Trek Tricorder, a multipurpose scanning and medical diagnostic tool that was featured in so many of the science fiction’s many episodes. The winner was Basil Leaf’s DxtER, which has onboard sensors and software algorithms to diagnose 34 health conditions that include diabetes, atrial fibrillation, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, urinary tract infection, sleep apnea, leukocytosis, pertussis, stroke, tuberculosis and pneumonia.
• Elon Musk and the Musk Foundation have sponsored the Carbon Removal XPrize to tackle climate change by rebalancing the Earth’s carbon cycle. It has been ongoing for the last four years with teams from across the planet inventing and demonstrating solutions to pull carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and oceans and sequester it. A demonstration working solution must remove 1,000 tons per year and be scaleable and cost-effective to grow to a million. From there the goal is to implement these solutions to achieve gigaton CO2 removal annually. The prize has considered natural CO2 capture solutions, direct air capture (DAC), ocean capture, mineralization capture and anything else that would achieve net negative emissions. The $100 million total has already awarded 15 milestone prizes to entrants, each receiving $1 million. This month a panel will select the top 20 finalists to fight for the $50 million grand prize with the three runner-ups splitting $30 million.

XPrizes have challenged the status quo and conventional thinking. They have inspired new technologies and disrupted the old. That is what the latest XPrize just announced hopes to do. The focus is on solving the growing freshwater scarcity crisis.

Today, 80% of the global population faces freshwater scarcity. By 2030, freshwater demand will see a 40% supply deficit. Today we are more than 8 billion. By mid-century, we will be 10. The technologies in place today are inadequate to meet the supply challenge. Where we are desalinating ocean water, the technologies are expensive and polluting.

Called the Mohamed bin Zayed Water Initiative, it is a 5-year competition with $119 million on the line. The prize hopes to encourage the development of cost-effective, reliable desalination solutions to make more than 96% of Earth’s saltwater a source of fresh water.

In its words, the prize hopes to encourage the invention of “new desalination solutions to enable future-proof water supply for communities and ecosystems. These solutions must be scalable, cost-effective, reliable, and resilient in a changing climate. They should demonstrate enhanced environmental sustainability across energy and materials and minimize harm to marine life.” 

Named after the President of the United Arab Emirates, the prize purse sponsor, the competition includes a Track A and B.

• Track A – the winning team will reliably and sustainably generate one million litres of potable water per day (1,000 m3/ day) from seawater for a year through its desalination system. It will do the volume at a cost below a target benchmark to ensure global accessibility. Registration closes on April 30, 2025.
• Track B – the winning team will create a novel reverse osmosis membrane that can operate effectively for 10 years to turn seawater into drinking water. Registration closes on February 28, 2025.

To enter the competition go to the XPrize competition portal where you find an overview and frequently asked questions (FAQ). Already, 19 teams have entered but the site states that “a winning idea can come from anyone, anywhere.”

Guidelines have been published but the XPrize organizers have asked for public comment until June 1, 2024. Feedback and questions can be submitted to [email protected].

E-Jet is not biofuel. Twelve’s novel process is unlike any other synthetic fuel I have described previously on this site where I have covered synthetic fuels produced using the Fischer-Tropsch process, synfuels made from vegetable oils, animal fats, and organic waste oil, and ethanol-based synfuel derived from corn, sugarcane, and switchgrass.

E-Jet is different because it is made from the CO2 in air, using water and renewable energy. The fuel is created using a CO2 electrochemical reactor, a type of electrolyzer that Twelve has named Opus. Opus’ secret sauce is a Membrane Electrode Assembly (MEA) that resembles a shiny black leaf and emulates the natural process in plants called photosynthesis.

Opus’ MEA is an artificial photosynthesis system. The byproduct is the same as produced in natural photosynthesis: oxygen. With zero carbon emissions, Opus is a technology that could alter the battle to mitigate climate change.

How so?

You can plug Opus into a utility company, or a fossil fuel, concrete, or chemical producer to help them cut carbon emissions. You can plug Opus into a Direct Air Capture (DAC) plant like the ones developed by Carbon Engineering, the Canadian company working with Occidental Petroleum to reduce carbon emissions from the latter’s fossil fuel operations.

The Twelve website states that “at scale, Opus can transform existing supply chains to eliminate up to 10% of global industrial emissions in hard-to-abate sectors.” Maybe that’s why MIT’s Technology Review listed Twelve as one of the 15 climate technology companies to watch in 2023.

Solving The Aviation Industry’s Dilemma 

Aviation is an industry sector struggling to reduce its carbon emissions. The sector produces 2% of global CO2 emissions, relying predominantly on kerosene-based jet fuel. Electric and hydrogen-powered aircraft are still not viable.

Electric aircraft have distinct disadvantages because as conventional fuel-powered aircraft operate they lose weight as fuel is burned. Batteries don’t get lighter as an airplane flies. They lose energy capacity without losing weight. That means battery-powered aircraft are range-restricted.

The fuel’s low energy density challenges hydrogen-powered aircraft. This means to use hydrogen, an aircraft needs larger fuel tanks to produce the same amount of thrust obtained from burning jet fuel. Larger tanks mean added weight and reduced payload capacity.

Twelve was able to attract as a first customer the United States Air Force (USAF). In 2021 it launched a pilot project. The USAF describes the experience with Twelve as “profound.”

Testing showed Opus was highly deployable and scalable. Synthetic fuel could be produced in situ saving the cost of transportation, storage, and delivery while minimizing risk. How much risk? At the height of the war in Afghanistan, attacks on fuel and water convoys accounted for more than 30% of casualties in the field.

For the USAF deploying Opus means less reliance on traditional fuel supply chains. Deployed units create fuel as needed where they are operating. Field operation and maintenance do not require highly skilled technicians.

Nicholas Flanders, CEO and co-founder of Twelve describes the implications of the USAF experience: “With carbon transformation, we are untethering aviation from petroleum supply chains.” 

One of those untethered customers is Alaska Air. The company’s first commercial CO2 facility, called AirPlant, is being built in Moses Lake, Washington, where it will be powered by renewable hydroelectricity to produce E-Jet and another trademarked product called E-Naphtha. The latter will be used for making CO2Made® materials.

CO2Made materials will replace thousands of consumer and industrial products made today by using fossil fuels. CO2Made means a fossil-fuel-free, carbon-negative alternative to materials from fossil fuels without losing equivalent quality and performance. 

• Back in 2015, I described how the deficiencies of monoculture cultivation eventually was going to kill off the Cavendish variety, the dominant cultivar and seriously impact African consumption.
• In 2017 I described how Banana Xanthomonas Wilt, a bacterial disease was endangering the global crop and that there was a GMO solution that protestors were opposed to that could save the Cavendish.
• In 2018 I described how a fungus, Fusarium, was spreading Panama Disease across the globe endangering the Cavendish.
• In 2019 I described how banana growers were ignoring the need for genetic diversity at their continuing peril.
• In 2021 I wrote about the threat to food security because Panama Disease was not only wiping out billions of dollars of crops but was also threatening food security in Africa.

If you are unaware, the bananas that you slice into your cereal or munch on as a snack in the Global North, but eat daily as an essential food in much of the Global South, are seedless. Hence the crops grown are all clones derived from cuttings of existing plants. They are seedless because selective breeding has made it so. Who is responsible for the proliferation of seedless bananas? Blame America’s United Fruit Company known as Chiquita Brands International for the banana monoculture model that dominates the industry and continues to put the global crop in peril.

In 2017,  5.6 million hectares (13.8 million acres) of land was dedicated to banana production globally. Almost all of the bananas grown came from countries in the Global South.

Australian researchers at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) are pursuing the rescue of the Cavendish by developing a genetically modified (GM) banana that is Panama-Disease-resistant. The new variety is called the QCAV-4 and the Australian government has approved it as safe to eat.

A gene found in a wild red banana that is native to Malaysia and Sumatra called Musa Acuminata Ssp Malaccensis, has been inserted into the Cavendish variety and won over the Aussie government to accept a GM crop for consumption.

What seems weird about the Aussie announcement by its developers, is the reference to QCAV-4 as being a “safety net” just in case Panama Disease should spread beyond where it currently is confined to a small area of Queensland. Queensland is where 95% of the country’s banana crop is grown, 97% of it Cavendish.

For banana growers, old habits die hard. The truth is, that the world needs to diversify banana growing to cultivate the many varieties that already are around, and through selective breeding or genetic modification, secure this important food source for the planet.

Professor James Dale is the leader of the banana biotechnology program at QUT where the QCAV-4 was engineered. His remarks in a recent interview about the response to the government approving the new variety state, “We welcome this decision as it’s a very important step towards building a safety net for the world’s Cavendish bananas.” He also notes that “in some countries, particularly in Central America, they spray up to 60 times a year” to try and stop the collapse of the Cavendish monoculture model caused by the spread of Panama Disease.

The Aussie team is now turning its research to develop another “safety net” GM version of the Cavendish that is threatened by a leaf-infecting fungus Pseudocercospora fijiensis, also known as Black Sigatoka.

Dale states that gene editing can future-proof foods like bananas. He concludes “We’re going to need these sorts of technologies to cut down on pesticides, but also as we’re getting into a much more challenging climate, we’ve got to be able to generate new cultivars that can cope with all these new conditions.”

Already, the ocean is the largest carbon sink on the planet. It has kept a lid on our excess emissions but at a cost. The carbon dioxide (CO2) being absorbed by seawater is making it more acidic which is endangering all shellfish, crustaceans, phytoplankton, and corals.

A new take on the deep ocean storage idea is to sequester carbon in areas where there is a paucity of oxygen-dependent marine life. Instead of giant bags in which to store CO2, the weight of the ocean water column would be enough to keep the carbon sequestered.

Researchers at the University of California in Santa Barbara (UC-Santa Barbara) have identified three potential carbon storage sites that are anoxic marine basins where vast amounts of plant biomass could be sunk to the ocean floor.

What are anoxic marine basins? Oxic and anoxic are opposites. Ocean environments are largely oxic, that is, oxygen-rich. Some areas, however, are anoxic containing little to no oxygen. These areas of the ocean can only support anaerobic life. Anaerobics include many bacteria and fungi. The creatures found near deep-sea hydrothermal vents which scientists call archaea, are anaerobic. They use other types of chemistry within the ocean to harvest energy to sustain them and they predominate in deep sea basins where there is low to no oxygen present.

The UC-Samta Barbara researchers have published a study of three candidate anoxic basins that could become permanent carbon storage sites. Their locations are:

• the Black Sea where Ukraine and Russia are currently engaged in a war,
• the Cariaco Basin off the coast of Venezuela,
• and the Orca Basin in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Black Sea Basin is the largest anoxic basin in the world covering 322,367 square kilometres (124,467 square miles) and sinking to a depth of 2,300 metres (7,500 feet). Below depths of 150 metres (approximately 490 feet), there is no dissolved oxygen. The water in the Black Sea does very little intermixing with the Mediterranean.

The Cariaco Basin is a deep trench with a middle ridge that splits it in two. It covers 2,000 square kilometres (770 square miles) off Venezuela’s Caribbean coast. As seen in the middle picture above, it has no dissolved oxygen below a depth of 100 metres (330 feet).

The Orca Basin covers approximately 10,000 square kilometres (approximately 3,860 square miles). Seen at the bottom of the illustration accompanying this posting, the Orca Basin’s anoxic zone lies 2,200 metres below the surface and extends for 200 metres to the Gulf of Mexico seafloor bordering Louisiana and Texas.

Of the three, the study notes the Black Sea in particular could “accept biomass storage at climatically relevant scales with moderate changes to the geochemical state of abyssal water and limited communication of that impact to surface water.” If done correctly, it could provide safe storage for more than 1,000 years and make a real dent in CO2 atmospheric numbers.

The UC-Santa Barbara research notes that the separation between oxic and anoxic water is very distinct because of drastic differences in density within the water column between the surface and anoxic zones that tend to be hypersaline. One researcher notes that when navigating a submersible underwater it actually will bounce off the demarcation line between the layers.

Why would using anoxic marine basins possibly work? Geoengineering solutions focused on carbon sequestration appear to be an acceptable way to mitigate climate change if you go by the discussions at COP28. According to The Guardian, 475 were in attendance at the Dubai conference.

Plant biomass has become one of the strategies under consideration for carbon sequestration. The sinking of kelp, sargassum, and algae plant biomass was recently covered here at 21st Century Tech Blog. The article featured a company called Running Tide which was developing biomass seeding technology to fast-cycle seaweed biomass containing captured CO2 to the bottom of the ocean.

One of the issues raised in the article was a concern about dropping massive amounts of biomass to ocean floors in oxygen-rich zones. It appears, however, that using the technology in the Black Sea, or the other two anoxic marine basins, we could achieve decarbonizing at megaton levels using sunk biomass that would be an effective climate change mitigation solution for a millennium.