“We need a plan for how to feed ourselves in scenarios where sunlight suddenly declines.”
Scientists say they have discovered a new food source that could save humanity in the event of nuclear war. Researchers are figuring out how to grow 33.63 tons of kelp a year for emergencies — they say the kelp could save 1.2 billion people from starvation during a nuclear winter.
With war widening in the Middle East, conflict continuing in Ukraine and the threat of a clash between China and Taiwan, the world may not have been this close to the brink of nuclear war in generations, the Daily Mail writes: “Researchers have once again begun sounding the alarm about the risks of a nuclear winter: imagine the Earth hidden from the sun by as much as 165 million tons of soot, freezing 16 degrees Fahrenheit below global average temperatures.”
All-out nuclear war could reduce crop yields in the near future, according to agricultural and atmospheric scientists. around the world, reducing global calorie production by 90 percent.
But an international team of researchers has found a “salty, savory answer”: huge seaweed farms strung along the ocean's surface using ropes and buoys could help save up to 1.2 billion lives.
The team estimates , with an average cultivation of 33.63 tons of dry kelp, or life-saving seaweed, could be grown annually — on just a relatively modest amount of ocean surface area and on a reasonable budget.
«If you use more productive areas, you would need about 416,000 sq km of ocean, which is roughly the size of Colombia,» said the study's lead author, environmental scientist Dr Florian Ulrich Jahn.
Dr Jahn, presenter A data science specialist at the Colorado-based Alliance to Help Earth in Disasters (ALLFED), he collaborated on the project with Louisiana State University's Department of Ocean and Coastal Sciences, a German astrophysicist, and scientists from Texas and the Philippines.
< p>The economic cost of this emergency program, aimed at feeding billions of people during a harsh nuclear winter, will be less than past successful US programs, Dr Yen said. «In the paper we compare the scale to US aircraft production during World War II,» Dr Yen said.
«We estimate that expansion will likely require fewer resources than it currently does and should therefore be feasible,» he added, «but it is still a work in progress.»
One of the factors that What still remains controversial, according to Dr. Yen, although his team is still crunching the numbers, was what the actual price of seaweed might be in such a scenario.
Their study, published in the journal Earth's Future, used oceanic climate models of the dramatic changes that would occur in a real nuclear winter.
«When the ocean surface gets cold, the water becomes denser, so it sinks, stimulating vertical circulation,» study co-author Dr. Cheryl Harrison told DailyMail.com.
The result would be a convection current that would lift up nutrient-rich water. water from the ocean depths to the surface, effectively fertilizing the regions needed for this massive aquatic plant growing program.
«Technically, this is called 'penetrative convection,'» explains Dr. Harrison, «and is the reverse convection that occurs on your stove when you cook pasta, where cold water sinks instead of warm water rises, resulting in vertical circulation.»
Dr Harrison, who leads biophysical ocean modeling at the Louisiana State University Laboratory, said the process was well documented during the winter months at high latitudes, but a nuclear winter would push the cycle closer to the equator. “During a nuclear winter, the water stays cold for many years, so it just keeps flowing, churning up the deep water and its nutrients,” she wrote in an email. “Because it’s dark and cold, those nutrients aren’t used up as quickly.” phytoplankton, algae that form the basis of the ocean food web.»
Healthier ocean greens such as seaweed “do well in these conditions, making them an excellent alternative food source,” Dr. Harrison said.
But people don't need to imagine a future where they put salty, wet sea plants on their plates at every meal, these researchers emphasized.
Because the iodine found in seaweed can be toxic to humans in such large quantities, kelp's contribution to the food web is likely to be more indirect. They estimate that seaweed farms would replace only 15 percent of the food currently consumed by humans, but would mostly be repurposed to produce animal feed and biofuels.
Researchers believe the archipelago Algae farms the size of Columbia could provide up to 50 percent of current biofuel production and 10 percent of livestock and other essential animal feed.
Dr. Harrison told Live Science that the project could also be used as a humanitarian aid after more likely disruptions to the global food supply chain.
Everything from a massive asteroid impact or giant volcanic eruption to a regional crop failure or local drought could be offset by a similar seaweed program.
“Throughout history, major eruptions have caused famine in the region and around the world,” Dr. Harrison said. “Either way, we need a plan for how to feed ourselves in these scenarios of sudden reduction in sunlight.”
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