Clearly the science isn’t settled.
“Change (IPCC) uses earth system models to project climate change. These projections inform critical political, social and technological decisions. However, if we can’t accurately model the marine carbon cycle then we cannot truly understand how Earth’s climate will respond to different emission scenarios.
In research published today, we show that zooplankton, tiny animals near the base of the ocean food chain, are likely to be the biggest source of uncertainty in how we model the marine carbon cycle. Getting their impact on the cycle right could add an extra 2 billion tonnes to current models’ assumptions about annual carbon uptake by the ocean. That’s more carbon than the entire global transportation sector emits.”
Quote from: csiro.au
Economics Legislation Committee – 28/10/2021
Estimates
INDUSTRY, SCIENCE, ENERGY AND RESOURCES PORTFOLIO
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
Senator RENNICK : How are we going to treat phytoplankton, which is the biggest carbon sink in the world? The ocean is 70 per cent of the earth’s surface, and that all sits offshore. Australia has got the third-biggest territorial waters in the world. Does Australia get to count its phytoplankton in its offsets in its territorial waters, given that we’ve got to count our coal emissions and everything else?
Dr Mayfiel d : In terms of trying to do emissions accounting, those are protocols that others look at. There’s one global project called the Global Carbon Project, which tries to estimate carbon sinks and sources globally. It doesn’t get down to that level of detail, but it tries to estimate those things. In terms of Australia’s emissions, that’s done through the department of industry. They run the NGGI account, the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory, at this point in time.
Senator RENNICK: Sorry to interrupt you again. When you say ‘that level of detail’, given that phytoplankton is the biggest carbon sink in the world, how can you possibly say we haven’t got down to that level of detail when it’s the biggest carbon sink in the world? It is the biggest carbon offset.
Dr Mayfield : I can’t comment on that.
Senator RENNICK: You’re the head of the CSIRO. If you guys aren’t around it, what do you expect us common laymen—
Dr Mayfield : You’re talking about blue carbon, ultimately. It comes in many forms, whether it’s algae, plankton, mangroves, seagrass or whatever—there’s a whole range of things—and they try to get accounted for in the national accounts, but I can’t say that I can speak specifically to the phytoplankton that you talk about at this point in time.
