Ocean-healing 3D agriculture and forestry: Earthuse with Marine Agronomy by Ocean Foresters

Dear Dr. Malone, This year's Climate CoLab appears quite successful with many "out of box" proposals. We appreciate the stress many diversified proposals place on the judges. The following story and thought exercise might bring each judge comfort with their decisions. After a Great Fire in London, the king asked Sir Christopher Wren to rebuild London’s churches. Wren surrounded himself with a team of accomplished craftsmen. Still, the work required so many workers that quite a few did not know the great architect on sight. One day, while Wren was overseeing work on St. Paul's Cathedral -- he took a walk among the workers and talked to them. Wren approached one stonecutter and asked, "What are you doing?" The man replied, "As anyone can see I'm hewing stone!" Wren put the same question to a second stonecutter who said, "I'm earning five shilling two-pence a day." Finally, Wren asked a third stonecutter, "What are you doing?" And the man answered, "I'm building a great cathedral." Building a middle ages cathedral is a decent analogy for solving Climate Change. Near the time of this story, one generation would start the cathedral and future generations would finish it. Whole communities participated in building a cathedral, communities just like you are organizing to find innovative and complete solutions to Climate Change with Climate CoLab. The thought exercise consists of asking yourself questions related to your role in Climate CoLab: Who am I in the story? What am I doing?

This is a weak attempt to get support for a different proposal on seaweed forests submitted to the global context. And they are wrong to say that the oceans have been neglected here. In fact several of the individual contests have had oceans proposals submitted, including the one that they are promoting. This is not supportable. --- (1) It is a very complete list of items that are addressed in this presentation. It provides a very nice description of the activities. About 20 million tons/yr of seaweed is now farmed worldwide, almost all in Asia. But this is only 0.3% of food farmed on land. Yet the oceans cover 70% of Earth. This vast space can be more effectively used to sustain humanity. This is not a new idea, the U.S. Marine Biomass Program having done pioneering work in this area in the 1970s. What is new is appreciation of the urgency to find climate-change-immune food security, and advances in aquaculture techniques that make the prospect of oceanic farming more ocean-healing. (2) There is no information on emissions reduction in “How much will emissions be reduced or sequestered vs. business as usual levels? (3) It also expects no proposal costs. Claims that marine agronomy can be profitable throughout the world. Costs are not reported in the text.