This is part 2 of the first of The Ocean Embassy's series on ocean-based Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) technologies. One of many discussed solutions to the climate crisis, besides of course emission reduction, is the potential of storing carbon in the ocean, for example using marine biomass such as seaweed or more complicated chemical mechanisms. In order to really understand how those solutions might be working, though, today’s episode will start out with actually explaining how the ocean takes up and processes carbon in the first place. Not only are we talking about that, however, but we are also discussing what is behind that huge promise of blue carbon, as it is often termed.

And to make it even more exciting, on this episode I don’t have one guest, but five! The groundwork and basis for this long conversation is a paper published by seven phenomenal female scientists who have a very multidisciplinary background within the marine science and policy sector. The paper is called The Promise of Blue Carbon Climate Solutions: Where the Science Supports Ocean-Climate Policy written by Anne B. Christianson, Anna Cabre, Blanca Bernal, Stacy K. Baez, Shirley Leung, Alicia Perez-Porro and Elvira Poloczanska.

With five of these authors I dissected their paper, talking about the different mechanisms of the oceanic carbon cycle, the ways in which climate solutions can enhance or support these mechanisms, and to what degree we already have policy supporting that. With a group of such interdisciplinary guests we really get a broad perspective on the issue or potential of blue carbon and you will see, also throughout the entire series of next episodes, that opinions are sometimes quite far apart. Nonetheless, in this episode we sort of set the ground rules for understanding the carbon cycle in the first place and getting a sense of how incredibly difficult it is to create policy supporting that science, and vice versa.

Cover art: Simon + Anna Madlener. Based on the Spilhaus world projection.

Music and Sound Effects: Lukas Bindel

Mixing: Anna Madlener

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