Its a fact of life, the amount of water in our oceans is increasing. The oceans are not getting any deeper so at the edges of said oceans people have noticed a strange phenomon, the sealevels are rising.. Reasons are 1. Ice is melting because the atmosphere has warmed due to CO2 emissions. 2. (until recently ignored, not by us) expansion of water as it warms. 3. (also ignored, not by us) the increased burning of hydrogen atoms in natural gas as opposed to carbon on oil, coal or biomass. Wondering about the daisies? We’ll get to that.
Meanwhile because the average temperature around the globe is higher, land dries out and oceans warm and become true cyclone guns. When a storm brews on the high seas it extracts heat from it, the more heat the water holds, the more water can evaporate into the storm, the heavier it becomes. The heated water also feeds the winds to powers hitherto unseen on Earth. Gales of 295 km/h that’s 183 miles/hour for you french out there. Winds that leave your nostriles wrapped around your ears..
In bone dry California sudden rains cause mudslides and wash away the topsoil, cars and people as if they’re balsa models. Diseaster upon diseaster and their frequency is rising. You may have forgotten or failed to notice, so we mention it here.
What is the problem? Heavy rains, droughts are bad for life on Earth. Top soil that is washed away will rot and generate CO2, H2S, if it is flushed by 1 meter per hour rainfall (like on the Phillipines right now) where will all the nutrients go? What will grow. How will we eat if the land is either to dry or flushed bare. That’s the problem.
Here’s the solution : Grow more plants and there will be more water circulating in the soil and the air above. That’s the lesson we learn from Peter Westerveld (who recently died but should get a statue somewhere nice). Biomass, grass, trees, schrubs, will capture water, cool the ground, provide shade for other creatures, CAPTURE CARBON DIOXIDE. Provide evolutionary resilience (not the type of resilience that boils down to bearing climate change with a smile, but the type that will help us overcome its devestating effects).
Where to leave all that water? Put it in the ground!
I can not make the calculations, but consider the weight of a good sized tree, constructed out of Nitrogen, Carbon, Hydrogen, Sulfer and other molecules (sheading a lot of O2 during growth). These have to come from somewhere. Water and CO2 is sequestered in them. They contain water, their roots and the fungal network between the roots, the carbon they store in the soil all hold water. That’s why a rainforrest is well, a RAIN forrest (also because it is fertilized by ocean rain laced with nutrient dust swept up from the Sahara desert, but whatever).
If we want to curb the rise of our ocean levels then increasing the land area that has lush plantgrowth would be beneficial in many ways. Actually as Peter Westerveld stated : Any land with over 100 mm or annual rainfall can be made into green water capturing land. As he showed the only thing needed is to make sure rainwater that falls on the land doesn’t flood away but soaks into the soil. This means most of Saudi Arabia can be green, and of course when large portions of it are green rainfall in the rest will rise to allow greening that as well.
Shaping the land can shape our future
It is a double edged strategy to make land soak up what little water it catches, by digging trenches perpendicular to the water flow, on the contour lines of the landscape. This approach has trippled harvests, generated fresh water in Mali. It can work everywhere. The daisies can grow where we have the will to change the way water interacts with the soil, and we should be highly motivated to do so because of the multiple benefits, for our climate, our food production, our coastlines and our chance to survive the fossil fuel age..
for more see the Naga Foundation
This video may be preceded by an add from a billionair that thinks much more expensive and non sustainable solutions to the water scarcity problem are better..He should watch this video..