Tag: Climate Action

In some parts of the world, hot temperatures are now testing the limits of human survivability as Global Warming progresses unabated. #climatechange

While governments and industry work to cut carbon emissions & suck CO2 out of the atmosphere, we need an action plan to save the people who don’t have time to wait.

As someone who used to drive a submarine in the US Navy, I learned how people can live for long periods of time beneath the waves of the cold oceans. Let me explain how we did it:

• The safest nuclear reactors gave us decades of underwater propulsion & electricity to power our lights, navigation, air circulation, computers, music, heaters, TVs, and communications just to name a few. Thorium salt reactors are the safest yet.
• We ingested seawater & used distillation heat to create water vapor, remove salts, & collect the remaining freshwater to drink, shower, cook, and cool electronic equipment with. You may have done this science experiment in high school.
• We used electrolysis to split the H2O molecules of our newly collected freshwater to give us oxygen to breathe. Basic high school chemistry.
• Our CO2 scrubbers used sodium hydroxide & calcium hydroxide to trap carbon dioxide and remove it from the air. We do this on submarines and spaceships.
• The excess moisture humans create when they exhale was removed by dehumidifiers to prevent condensation on equipment and various surfaces. This simple technology is used everywhere.

These proven technologies have been in use since the 1950s and they keep getting better.

Our only limitation on the submarine was food we brought with us from the surface. Our spaceships face this same limitation. In “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” Jules Verne gave us a glimpse of farming the sea floor & now this is becoming a reality both in self-contained hydroponic pods & vertical farming. Indoor farming is also showing amazing progress all over the world.

People want to be connected with each other & that’s where the undersea Internet plays a role. Most of the global Internet runs across the ocean floor via fiber optic cables so we can tap into them. Even Microsoft has submerged data centers in the ocean to keep them cool.

Action Required: Let’s build underwater habitats using existing, proven technology & start trials as soon as possible. Millions of people, livestock, & crops around the world are living in extreme heat & are running short of water. Remember, when crops and livestock die from heat and/or lack of water, the game is up for humans too.

The science of living underwater is sound because I lived it. Submariners from around the world have been doing this for decades. It’s time to re-purpose & scale this technology of research, exploration & war to help mankind.

We just need to try.