I was at a high speed networking conference a week or two ago and one of the presentations was on the various applications the generated such massive datasets that they need 100 Gigabit network links (just trust me, that’s fast) to cope with it all. There were the usual astronomers with their constantly photographing the entire night sky, there were the genome folding folks calculating new drugs and genetic treatments, but the one that caught my eye was the group in San Diego that were putting high speed fiber down to the piers so they could put cameras out under the water to monitor and track phytoplankton and marine algae. Why? Well, we were told that rising CO2 levels are not only leading to global warming, they are also leading to acidification of the oceans, which in turn attacks the calcium-based shells of many of the smallest creatures that contribute about 20 percent of the oxygen we breath (the way the presenter put it, “if they go, just imagine how you’re going to feel when you’re missing every fifth breath”).
Add in all the algae growing in the ocean, which isn’t as directly threatened ***(yet)***, and we’re looking at the source of something like 70 percent of all the oxygen we breath (yeah, rainforests are apparently only about 28 percent, so this crisis is actually going to hit us first).
The science is irrefutable, but these maroons refuse to learn or think. The good news is that there was also a presentation on an experiment that used massive datasets and high performance computer clusters to forecast the potential for sequestering liquefied CO2 in underground brine vaults made from filling up drained crude oil wells with salt water. There are folks working very hard to save these noobs from themselves, you almost want to conclude they shouldn’t be allowed to benefit from all this hard work…