Focusing on SolutionsENVISIONATION

Over the past 5000 years human activity has reduced the total amount of life on earth to less than half of what it was throughout the preceding 500,000 years.

The impact of this biomass loss has thus far been largely overlooked in the climate models. This greatly increases our exposure to climate change but at the same time points the way to the solution.

What’s required is a:

Global Environmental Restoration Project To repair the biosphere and re-grow the lost biomass in order to heal the planet • This presentation aims to show how restoration of just 15% of the

lost life would drawdown 600 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon sufficient to return atmospheric CO2 to pre-industrial levels.• If we stop further damaging, change our ways and then repair

and restore the planets ecology, then the biosphere will continue to be able to support us.

Life has Spent 4 Billion Years Terra-Forming The Earth

Life is a coloniser - it is constantly seeking to adapt space to make habitats that suit its requirements. This process has been refined and adapted over Earth's 4.5 billion year history.

Life achieves this by recycling the finite elemental resources of the planet using the power of the Sun as nutrients are recycled into ever more diverse and efficient interdependent biological organisms.

On our current path we are committed to 4°C before the end of this century. The last time temperature was this high was 37 million years ago.

Earth’s evolutionary history and its huge changes over time.

Temperatures 2°C above the preindustrial and sea level was 6 – 7 metres above the current level

Life as we know it evolved through 5 ice age cycles over the past half million years. Humanity has set in motion exponential climatic change that will cause vastly different conditions that many species including ourselves may not be able to adapt to.

CO2 is now off the scale.We are currently on track for 4°C warming possibly as soon as 2050.CO2 concentration is now as far above the pre-industrial level as the depth of the last ice age was below it.At 4°C above preindustrial levels there was no ice at either pole and sea level were 70m higher than now. That last happened 40 million years ago. At 2°C warming above preindustrial levels as we saw in the last slide sea level was 7-8 meters higher - this was 10 million years ago.The ice will take time to melt, but without intervention we are committed to this and have condemned future generations to it.Sea level falls over 100 meters during an ice age.

500,000 years of Human evolution

Until now, life has created a self regulating habitat support systemThe key element is carbon and the balancing factors that allow life to maintain the Earth’s temperature within acceptable parameters are the carbon cycles.

Namely: the living organic carbon cycle and, secondly, the much slower, much larger non-living carbon cycle.

Balance is maintained by the transfer of a portion of the living cycle into or out of the non-living carbon cycle.

Planetary temperature adjusts and is maintained by the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide. This has been maintained for at least the past 500,000 years between 180 and 280 ppm.

Humans have managed to disrupt this cycle by raising atmospheric CO2 levels to 400 ppm and by altering the ecologies of both the land and seas.

Disrupting ecological balances has resulted in at least a 50% reduction in the total living biomass on Earth and this has led to:

• A corresponding reduction in the size of the carbon cycle, which means that there is now a reduction in the amount of carbon that can transfer out of the living carbon cycle into the long-term carbon-cycle sequestration such as rocks, sediment and ultimately hydrocarbons.• A reduction in the resilience of the planet’s biosphere to

recover from shocks, be they:• asteroid strike, • volcanic event, • or the population explosion of 7.3 billion highly intelligent

apes that burn fossil fuels to power their civilisation.• Acidification of the oceans with devastating effects on marine

life.• Multiple positive (bad) feedbacks that act upon each other to

accelerate warming.

Factors contributing to loss of Biomass on Land• Humans wiping out megafauna, big

carnivores in particular, leading to forest reduction and desertification.• Humans clearing forests for

agriculture.• Land clearing, loss of habitat to

human encroachment and contamination.• Overexploitation of stocks of wild

species.• Agricultural practices that impoverish

the soil.• Artificial fertilisers and chemicals

disrupting ecology.• Human-disseminated invasive species.

Loss of Biomass in the Oceans• The oceans started coming under extreme pressure

around 500 years ago when shipping technology advanced so that we could successfully hunt large marine mammals.

• Within 200 years the majority of the whales were gone from the north Atlantic, and by the middle of the last century whale numbers globally were down to below 5% of historic levels.

• Fish stocks also fell rapidly as the nutrient cycles were disrupted. Evidence from the logs of early explorers shows a huge decline in life across all the oceans.

• Scientific evidence collected over the past 50 years shows a greater than 50% reduction in fish stocks in that time alone.

• and more importantly phytoplankton numbers, which are the basis for most marine life and responsible for at least half of the biospheres oxygen production are down 50% since 1970.

Summarising the scale of the problem

Gigatonnes of carbon

5000 years ago to 200 years ago Now 2016 2040 Excess

Gt Carbon in Atmosphere as CO2 and that we are committed to adding 600 850 960 360CO2 ppm 280 400 450

Gt Carbon in Ocean 36500 38000Gt Carbon that will off gas as CO2 when atmospheric concentrations decrease 150Carbon allowance for positive feed backs 50Excess Carbon in Atmosphere by 2040 560

Biomass 5000 years ago Now 2016 Lost

Terrestrial plant biomass 1100 550 ? 550Marine surface biomass 2000 1000 ? 1000Deep sea biomass 300 150 ? 150Soil fungi and bacteria - Little known 4600 2300 ? 2300GT Carbon in Biomass lost over past 5000 years 8000 4000 4000So here is the good news - we only need to restore around 15% of the lost biomass to pull down 600 Gt of Carbon and return to around 280 ppm of CO2

Restoring Biomass• Figures for the total amount of biomass on the planet are very

approximate and vary widely between the various scientific studies; however, in general, the more we learn, the more biomass we discover.

• The figure of 8,000 Gigatonnes for pre-human-impact biomass is probably very conservative, but whatever the figure, it is likely to have been fairly consistent even throughout the past five ice age cycles.

• The important message to take away is that the biosphere has previously supported very much more biomass and it is therefore capable of supporting very much more life than it does now. (We only need to recover a relatively small portion of the lost 4,000 gigatonnes.)

• Which means that we have a huge carbon store readily available to us and adding life provides the mechanism for its capture.

• Please note, this is not the same as the relatively small transfer of carbon out of the living carbon cycle into rocks and sediment, which is only a matter of 5 to 10 gigatonnes per year.

How realistic is Biomass recovery?• For the biosphere to recapture atmospheric carbon

we require a growth medium, sunlight and nutrients.• Large areas of the oceans are nutrient deficient, but

fortunately nutrient delivery systems are being designed to correct this and they will be very fast acting, as plankton can grow in a matter of weeks.

• The process will need to be managed and kept in balance with the seasons between the northern and southern hemispheres.

• Ecological balance can be restored on land allowing forest regrowth.

• Farming practices can be changed (with productivity gains) so that the organic content of the soil can be restored.

• As soon as atmospheric carbon levels start to drop CO2 will off-gas from the oceans and acidity will start to reduce. This will kick off negative (good) feedbacks because marine organisms with carbonate shells will be able to form more easily, thereby accelerating the restoration process.

• Take care of the biosphere and the biosphere will take care of us. • No other mechanism has the capacity to deliver at the necessary scale, economy and safety.

We may only have one shot at this• The biosphere is already stretched to the very limits and dangerous positive feed back cycles are well underway.

• Biomass loss is accelerating; on our current trajectory there will be no commercial fish stocks left in the sea by 2045, and if temperature rise reaches 2.5°C, we may not be able to save the forests.

• Very rapid warming in the Arctic may allow methane release (a very powerful greenhouse gas) to overwhelm all of our efforts.

• The global economy cannot be allowed to collapse, as this would lead to numerous positive feedbacks as people cut down every last tree for energy and eat every remaining living creature.

• It is absolutely critical we decarbonise our economy and transition to renewable energy as rapidly as possible.

• Diets must be revised with much lower terrestrial meat consumption, replacing it with farmed marine food and realistic meat substitutes.

• Re-growing biomass needs to start immediately

• In order to buy time for biomass regrowth and carbon drawdown, remedial action may have to be taken to prevent some of the worst positive feedback loops, such as measures designed to increase sea ice and marine cloud cover that will reflect away the Sun’s rays back into space.

• To stabilise sea levels the colossal amount of additional heat that has been absorbed by the oceans has to be lost. This requires that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are reduced back down to 280 ppm to reduce the greenhouse effect and allow more heat to be radiated back out into space.

The benefits of a Global Environmental Restoration Project• The undertaking will deliver full

employment and a global economic boom as we: • retool for all renewable energy• convert farming practices to increase soil

carbon • establish an entirely new marine husbandry

industry• Investigate and implement methods to

reverse ice loss • and increase the albedo of marine clouds

and the ocean surface• Committing to a tangible plan will

immediately restore confidence. This will lift financial markets and make the financing of the project viable.

• Allow us to meet our responsibilities to our children and descendants.

• There are numerous examples of successful regional environmental restoration projects.

• Now is the time for the big one – the restoration of the Earth’s biosphere. This is something we can and must do!

• We simply have to take proper responsible control of our global environment, as we do with our individual local environments.

• We can live sustainably, while still exponentially advancing our knowledge and capability, in both sciences and arts.

• We are after all part of the process – a stage in the evolution of life on earth.

ENVISIONATIONThe team:Bru Pearce and Nick Breeze of Envisionation & H. David Tattershall of Hope Or Cope, LLCAcknowledgements:

we would like to thank all our friends and colleagues, particularly our scientific colleagues, who have worked so hard with us for many years to assist in developing our knowledge.

Credits:we have endeavored to include credits on the images where they are not open source if we have missed any please accept our apologies.

Collaboration:please contact us if you have relevant research that can help in the development of the concepts presented here.

Any questions: enquiries@envisionation.co.ukwww.Envisionation.co.uk