We often only talk about the levels of guilt that people have when we refer to the consequences of climate change on the planet and few of the actions that many of us carry out to correct what we have worn down over time.
In today's post we talk about great initiatives by people who dedicate their lives to caring for the Earth and those who live on it.
Keep reading!
LET'S PAINT THE MOUNTAINS WHITE
It's no secret, but yes, the Earth is warming rapidly, the ice is melting and, although we sometimes don't recognize it, the most visible cause of these worrying events is us.
Other times, however, a feeling of responsibility haunts us and we think that, if we are the “causes” of the ice melting, why not cause the opposite effect, and cool it down again?
There are people on our planet with great thinking minds who have come up with very interesting ideas; we will tell you about them.
One of them is to create a submarine which acts as freezer; In theory, this project aims to collect melt water from glaciers, remove the salt and refreeze it. This submarine can produce icebergs 5 metres thick and 25 metres wide. It has the potential to create huge masses of ice.
On the other hand, to correct the fact that the Arctic ice sheets are becoming thinner, a team from the University of Arizona has developed a proposal in which it intends to place ten million wind pumps on the ice sheets, with this, the water would rise to the surface during the winter months, and would freeze, increasing its thickness.
The magazine Nature He had the idea of building a wall in front of the Jakobshavn Glacier, Located in Greenland, the wall that has been most affected by the melting ice has been built. The wall that is planned to be built is 100 metres long and the idea is to stop its erosion.
Although some of these are just projects, others are already experimenting and doing small tests outside the laboratory.Ice911" is an organization that monitors the refreezing of the poles and has been applying silica microspheres since 2018, which have the function of creating a rebound effect of sunlight, on the weaker ice layers in the Arctic to prevent them from warming up.
One of the ideas that may seem more surreal, but that, if you think about it twice, may even seem quite logical, is that of Eduardo Gold, a Peruvian national and engineer by profession, who has come to the conclusion that perhaps, painting the mountains white, glacier melting may be reduced. Curious, isn't it?
Gold's reasoning is quite simple; if dark mountains absorb more heat and light from the sun, lighter mountains will have the opposite effect, so why not turn them white? The engineer has set to work and has set up camp in the mountains that adorn the city of Licapa (Peru) and that have an altitude of 4,200 meters.
Using a mixture of sand, water, lime and soap, he covered some 15,000 square metres of rocks. After this, Gold checked the temperature of the painted mountains with an infrared thermometer and compared them with those that were not yet painted. The difference between the white and black ones was 16 degrees.Residents of Peru claim to have found ice in that area, which had never been there before.
The engineer plans to cover an area of three billion square metres to see if his idea will endure over time.
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WHY NOT BREEDING MORE REEFS?
Another worrying issue in our lives and as far as marine life is concerned, is the critical situation in which the coral reefsMany have disappeared, and of those that remain, barely 5% of them are in a healthy condition.
But, as we said before, in today's article we are not going to talk about the problems that reign on our planet, but rather we are going to look at the bright side of things and we are going to tell you about two very powerful initiatives that look after the life of the reefs.
On the one hand, we are going to talk about a project included in the program Reef Recovery Initiative led by Dr. Mary Hagerdorn, a marine biologist. Her life project is the cryopreservation of marine species.
The biologist has applied her preservation studies in a project for the conservation of reefs; the idea is mainly to store in Gene banks reef cells and keep them alive in liquid nitrogen. In this way they can be kept safe and alive for hundreds of years. Thus, it is clear that the loss of diversity can be greatly reduced, however, these measures are not entirely sufficient, since there are few reef species that are cryopreserved. But this is the only existing project in the world that applies this technology to preserve reefs, so their work is absolutely indispensable.
On the other hand, it is interesting to mention the initiative with the most impact of the Archipelago of San Andres and Providencia to preserve the coral reef barrier. In Colombia there is an NGO dedicated entirely to the restoration of reefs; hence the name Corals of Peace Since 2016, they have proposed numerous strategies to keep them alive.
The main technique that this NGO carries out is coral gardening. The idea is to collect small fragments of barriers that have broken or from which parts of their bodies have been detached and place them in underwater nurseries. They are kept there until they reach a size that is suitable for transplanting them to the areas that are to be repopulated. In this way, a natural and rapid recovery is achieved.
Our glasses Green Reef They are inspired by all the reefs that are still alive, those that have lost their life, and those that are growing in a nursery to return to the life they know.They are a wake-up call, a cry of hope and a promise that we will continue to do everything in our power to once again enjoy the colorful coral reefs.
THE WORLD'S BIGGEST WAVES ARE FAR FROM SURFABLE
The effects of climate change are not only evident in the clear rise in sea level, but are also reflected in the force of ocean winds and the size of waves, which have changed enormously over the last 30 years.
If you are a surfer and you are reading this, do not get excited yet because an excessive increase in the size of sea waves, far from being surfable, is very dangerous for coastal regions.
Although ocean winds and wave heights are increasing and have become noticeable across the globe, a particularly large increase has been seen in the Southern Ocean.
A study by the University of Melbourne used 31 wave and wind measurement satellites and collected data from 4 billion measurements taken between 1985 and 2018. This was then compared with data from 80 buoys floating in oceans around the world.
The result was that extreme winds in the Southern Ocean have increased by 8% over the past 30 years. surf Marinas, for their part, have increased its height by 30 centimeters, over the same period of time.
These data partly explain why the brutal storms and the gigantic waves that have been generated in recent years, and that, in addition, these phenomena are also attributed to the effects of climate change.
Unfortunately, not much has been done to control wind or ocean waves, because there are still things that are beyond our control. However, in the end, this is a chain of causes and effects. If we reduce global warming, the size of the waves will be reduced, the health of coral reefs will increase and, of course, it will be bitterly cold again at the North Pole.
