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Researchers over in the Northeast have just poured 65,000 liters of sodium hydroxide into the Gulf of Maine in order to conduct a geoengineering project, which they claim at least might combat climate change. This trial, which is officially called the Loch Ness Project, it took place Last August about 50 miles off the coast of Massachusetts. That was when scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution were seen pouring literally tons of this bright red chemical directly into the water over the course of roughly four days. The thinking is that by making the ocean more alkaline, it'll suck more CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it into harmless baking soda. The addition of the red color, it was just there for tracking purposes. Now, this is something that the ocean does already do naturally. It's estimated, in fact, that the five oceans trap a combined total of 38 trillion tons of CO2. But that's their natural limit. Based on the current average PH level of the water, the oceans literally cannot absorb any more CO2, at least naturally. However, this is exactly where the scientists come in. The thinking is, by changing the PH level of the ocean using sodium hydroxide, they can get the ocean to absorb ever more CO2. The geoengineering method, known as ocean alkalinity enhancement, aims to speed up this natural process by resetting the ocean's pH. Over four days, scientists added vast quantities of sodium hydroxide, an alkaline chemical tagged with a red dye, to the waters off the coast of Boston. Making the ocean more alkaline should encourage it to absorb even more CO2 from the atmosphere. Now, over on their official website, you can see that the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute actually has a graphic showing this idea as a simple drawing. Essentially, in the past, they claimed that the oceans were a lot more basic. However, with the addition of ever more CO2 from the atmosphere, the oceans began a process of absorbing the carbon dioxide from the air and becoming more and more acidic over time. However, through their alkalinity enhancement procedure, they can add sodium hydroxide to the ocean water, which will, at least in theory, lower the PH level, while at the same time allowing ever more CO2 to be captured. And so the that's the basic theory that they had going in this institute. They then got approval from the EPA and conducted a test by pouring this chemical solution into the ocean roughly 50 miles off the coast of Massachusetts. During this test, they poured in enough of this chemical solution to change the pH of the water from 7.95 up to 8.3. After doing so, they were able to measure, allegedly 10 more tons of Carbon in entering the water immediately. Quote they then used cutting edge technology including autonomous gliders, long range autonomous underwater vehicles and shipboard sensors to track the spreading chemicals. Over the next few days, the scientists measured 10 tons of carbon entering the water as the ph increased from 7.95 to 8.3, matching pre industrial levels. In the best case scenario, the researchers estimate that the sodium hydroxide would absorb about 50 tons of carbon over the next year, equivalent to the average yearly emissions of five UK citizens. And this summary by the way, it came to us from the Daily Mail publication. And so that's why they use the average yearly emissions of UK citizens as a measurement. But just for your general reference, the average US citizen has about three times higher CO2 emissions per capita compared to the UK counterparts, meaning the amount of chemicals that they were able to pour into the ocean over the course of those four days, it would absorb enough CO2 to offset a single US citizen, which in and of itself kind of exposes one of the major problems with this approach, which is the scalability question. The sheer amount of these chemicals that'll need to be used every year to make a measurable dent in global CO2 levels is enormous. Quote to scale up ocean alkalinity enhancement to a point where it could abate industrial CO2 emissions, billions of tons of sodium hydroxide would need to be dumped into the oceans every year. And then if you just think about it logically, atop both the cost as well as the feasibility of pouring billions of tons of sodium hydroxide per year into all five of the world's oceans, there is the ecological impact. The ocean, much like any rainforest, is a large system and you can't expect to just change one variable and not have any knock on effects. Now for their part, the scientists that are conducting this research, they said that their project actually returns the ocean to where it was. They claim that over the last several decades industrial CO2 emissions have had what they call, quote, catastrophic effects on sea life as the acid dissolves marine creatures shells, damages coral and even wears away sharks teeth. And so they're basically saying that increasing the PH level would actually walk back some of those changes and restore the natural habitats to how they were decades ago. On the flip side, however, the critics, they say that we don't actually know what effect this will have in the ocean over the course of time. Quote the biggest source of controversy stems from the fact that the impact on marine wildlife is still largely unknown. Recent studies have warned that excessive alkalinity enhancement could affect species growth, metabolism and biodiversity. Additionally, as alkaline substances dissolve the they release trace metals which could build up in the oceans and create an ecological risk. And so these are the two camps. One is saying that we don't know the effects that this technique will ultimately have on the ocean marine life. And the trace metal elements might build up over time and cause a disaster. But on the flip side, the scientists pushing for this method and pushing to test it say that it will actually de acidify the ocean and restore the natural habitat to what it's, to what it once was. And I will mention that there is data to support this idea. In the past there have been some smaller scale examples of using chemicals to adjust the PH levels of smaller waterways. Quote. Most notably, Scandinavian rivers suffering fish declines due to acid rain were heavily dosed with alkaline lime in the 1980s, leading to the return of native salmon to Sweden's Atran River. Also, for what it's worth, the latest test that took place over in the Gulf of Maine off the coast of Massachusetts and apparently it showed no immediate negative impact on the marine life that was tested. Quote. Based on the biological and ecological impact data that we have collected and analyzed so far, there was no significant impact of the Loch Ness field trial on the biological community using the metrics we measured. And just a fun fact, the Loch Ness Project is actually an acronym and it stands for the Locking Ocean Carbon in the Northeast Shelf and Slope Project Project. And so there you have it, another basically moonshot project to attempt to, I don't know, save the Earth and combat climate change. Leave your thoughts in the comments if you think that this is a good idea or if it's humans again trying to play God with the engineering project. Also smash those like and subscribe buttons so the video reaches ever more people via the YouTube algorithm. And also all of the research links, including the link to the study that was found on the website and the sort of more of an explanation on how the project works, how the science behind it works. You can find that all down in the description box below. And then until next time, I'm your host Roman from the Epoch Times. Stay informed and most importantly, stay free.