You're listening to the reversing climate change,
podcast by the team at Nori. The carbon removal Marketplace.
This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs
developing solutions to climate change.
Hello and welcome to the reversing climate change
podcast. I'm Ross Kenyon I am the
creative editor at Nori's carbon removal Marketplace.
Today I have with me Kim makoi oceanographer who wrote The
Third Edition, of waves and beaches the powerful dynamics of
seeing Coast by Willard Bascom. Thank you for being here.
Kim, thank you for having me Ross.
This book is beautiful. I'm very glad to have you.
It's illustrations and it's just a beautiful aesthetic
experience, which is a wonderful thing to say about something
that is either aspirationally a textbook or is a light textbook.
But my understanding is that this book is a classic and a
listener, listening to the admittedly strange way.
I introduce you. How could you write a third?
Of a book by someone else. What is the story of waves and
beaches and how did you come to be involved in it?
Well, we've seen beaches went through two prior editions and I
use the first edition when I was in graduate school and as many
classic texts, they go through multiple editions and Willard
had thought about doing a third edition.
He handed it to me one day and said here, read this and I was
taken aback, much older than I am.
I'm much more accomplished and so I give him my reviews after a
couple of weeks and he liked it. So unfortunate.
He was hit by a car and died shortly thereafter.
So intervening few years, the estate asked me if I wanted to
do the Third Edition. So many years later we've
succeeded with Patagonia and it's been completely updated for
the 21st century, and it has a gold Threat of climate change
through the entire Coastal world.
There's a lot of climate change in the book.
Sort of is a thread is, maybe a good way to think of it.
One other thread that I noticed that helped me anchor, all the
discussions about oceans and World Systems is how important
it is to think about the energy that is present in systems like
this. And what it means in general to
increase or decrease the amount of energy Within in a system, as
a non-scientist, is this a theme that I should have picked up on
as important as it may be is or is not Absolutely Ross.
You hit it, hit the nail on the head.
So for instance, this just take something as simple as a damn,
that dams a river. So let's go Downstream and I'll
come back up to the dam. So Downstream the amount of
sediment reaching the coast is diminished and you have Coastal
erosion because you've reduced the sediments.
Now, you can view the dam. Upstream is really, it's holding
the potential energy of the water in reserve.
Goes off and produces electricity or Gates.
Crops it does something else other than moving sediments
Downstream. So the humans have co-opted so
to say the energy of the flowing water as you moves down the
river bed, moving sediments and nourishes, the coastal zone.
So it's a diversion of energy and that is happening
everywhere. We look one other application.
I saw that really caught my imagination is that With climate
change in the world heating up. Heat is another way of saying
energy, perhaps, and there's more energy in the system and
for lack of a better word, the system is more energetic, there
is more weather events, there are more things happening.
And when they do happen, the magnitudes or greater is that
broadly, a correct understanding.
Yes. For instance, something that
people online and can easily understand certainly in North
America is we have the jet stream.
Some people call it the polar vortex and it's a basically
winds that Circle and the Northern Hemisphere and from
left to right. If you will from west to east
and these have changed in their behavior and I'll just give you
a simple example, if you had an inclined plane.
So piece of plywood and you pour a little water on it.
The steepness of that piece of wood is not very much water sort
of trickles down with meanders left and right a little bit.
It it doesn't know what to do, so there's not a large as we
call it energy gradient, but you put that piece of wood really
Steep and pour a little bit of water on it and it goes down
that just straight as an arrow straight to the bottom.
So those two examples are similar to what's occurring with
the jet stream. It's Meandering larger because
the difference, the temperature difference between the lower
latitudes and the Northern latitudes is less that potential
energy if you will is less. So it meanders more and that's
over simplification in many ways to express that interview it.
But that's a simple view of what's happening.
So when we get a period in Texas where it's 85 degrees one day
and the next day, it's below zero, like, would they just had
a terrible cold spell? It's because The path of the jet
stream has been allowed to be altered and those sorts of
phenomena are going on. Everywhere, is it right to
attribute weather events. Like what just happened in Texas
as being the result in energy changes overall in the Earth's
system as a whole. Well, it's always been that way.
Yeah, you know the meanders of a river the meanders of the jet
stream or a function of Flow of energy and turbulence in the
atmosphere and low over small and large pieces of
sedimentation. So the paths in the frequency
that those pads may be reached is intimately connected with the
difference in temperature in the atmosphere.
So fluid dynamics in the atmosphere is driven by
temperature barometric pressure and relative humidity.
When any of those three parameters change in the
atmosphere, the path of winds and hence the path of weather
will change. That's no secret.
Yeah. Actually, as I'm asking this
question, I'm second-guessing myself because once you're at
that zoomed out level the questions you ask or something
like do changes in the earth's systems result in changes on
Earth and feel like that's sort of a tautology or fast a
questionnaire. Even my asking so that we live
above a solid earth in below of fluid Sky, that's where we are
in the ocean and any change to anything above or below will
change the ocean. And likewise, if you change the
ocean, it will change the atmosphere.
So it's a dynamic that has periods that are some very short
and I outline that in waves and beaches.
Some so short in occurrence that you can barely see them with an.
I notice some in a second and others so long and so large, you
cannot see him during the human lifetime.
Wow wait sorry. I feel like I feel like I missed
the beginning of the. Are you saying that there's
waves that are so big that you couldn't detect them over the
course of a human lifetime? Or did I misunderstand you, you
have you understood? Absolutely right.
No figure. Forget the figure, but it's like
17 or something. That in waves and beaches has a
graph of the different types of waves.
And one wave that we are experiencing is the wave of
climate change. Now, when the earth becomes
colder than prior more, liquid water will turn to solid water.
And what we're going through right now is the opposite so
during a period of climate warming as we have now more
solid Waters turning to liquid water.
That causes a rise in sea level. That's a very, very slow period
wave that wave currently has about a six-inch magnitude over
the last 150 years. 100 years actually.
So that's 15. Cm 6 inches in 100 years, that's
a slowly Rising wave. A wave of climate change.
Now, how large that's going to get and whether or not we can
predict it is yet to be seen. But it's a slow moving wave, you
can view it as a wave of solid ice turning to liquid and moving
towards the equator. That's what's happening is that
a case of an oceanographer taking poetic license or deal
actually speak like that. And do you climate change as a
way? That is perhaps one of the
original thoughts in waves and beaches.
Interesting. Chapter 5 is the Winds and waves
of climate change in waves and beaches cam.
What other ideas would you say? Our original?
And here because the book feels like a reference manual or a
textbook almost. But surely, there are ideas that
are perhaps new or you're presenting a new ways.
What else is in here? That is in that same theme or in
that same form, I could say what a very small length scale and
time scale. So the very creation Of waves,
waves, ocean waves are created by the wind blowing on the
surface of the ocean and small. Ripples actually they're called
capillary waves, very short period waves.
The wavelength is a width of your thumbnail, very small short
period waves. The very formation of these ways
is based upon surface tension. So surface tension and to a
lesser degree the viscosity which is Tendency of a fluid to
resist Shear. So with surface tension, that is
dependent upon temperature. So the very transfer of the
Winds energy into wave energy is being Modified by the viscosity
of the Water. By the surface tension of the
water, both of which are changing.
The surface tension is the most significant but both are
changing to my knowledge. No one's written.
About this honor climate length scale.
What does this do to the general formation of waves?
We do know from satellite data that wind speeds have been
increasing. We do know that in certain
portions of the world's oceans, the size of ocean waves, these
large, many meters. So, tens of feet tall waves.
They're changing their getting a little bit larger.
These storms are getting more intense and they're very short
periods of extreme. Dreamily intense winds.
We see that in Hurricane Seasons.
So there are some things that are happening in very short
length, scales that people have not really researched and
they're also these longer period things such as climate change
the winds and waves of climate change that many people dream
about this relates to a question.
I had with a former guest. Have you ever read John
kretzmann do you know him by chance?
No. Unfortunately, I do I don't mean
to put you on the spot that we had.
John kretschmer on the show. He's a sailor and other done a
number of transoceanic sales, and rounded the cape and things
like that. And we were talking about how
climate change is changing his business and how he thinks about
sailing. And he was talking about how the
window for Crossing, from the Northeast to Bermuda is
shrinking because of hurricane season lengthening or Worried
about changes in the trade winds and how predictable they are in
their sort of a the comment or setting of the trade winds that
they're incredibly dependable. And he has at least anecdotal
experience of them. No longer being nearly so
dependable. Have you seen much of that?
Is that is he on to something or is that relatively anecdotal?
It's anecdotal from him. However, it's statistically
substantiated by scientific data, that the Grandma wants
their. Yeah.
And in waves and beaches talk about the cumulated cyclonic,
energy a c e. And that's basically if you add
up the number of cyclones in the amount of energy in each
Cyclone, so you have you have a whirring Cyclone at 200 miles an
hour for two days. It's a little different than if
you have a cyclone that with 100 mile an hour for one day because
of the difference in. The speeds, it's not linear
would speed the energy and so there's more energy going into
the Atlantic hurricanes. That's well documented and, you
know, we don't have an infinitely, long historical
record but we do have a record going back about 100 years and
many of the hurricane seasons have been extended in the last
two decades, and the number of storms, I think Don't forget me
go, they ran out of alphabet letters in the alphabet for the
number of hurricanes in the season, so it's not just
anecdotal from Sailors. It's also from data, from
scientific measurements. I've seen people try to counter
this argument by saying not we experience more extreme weather
events these days because of better monitoring that more
people live in these areas more people are live on the ghosts in
that there actually is not an increase in extreme weather
events. I find this to be a questionable
assertion, you see it made sometimes, but my you saying
response. What my own opinion.
It is rather questionable assertion, please help out.
However, I mean, if you look at the storm in Galveston is
referred to, as Galveston storm of 1900.
So, 121 years ago, deaths, take Galveston, there weren't that
many people in Galveston but the 2004 Hurricane, Katrina
devastated, New Orleans, and we have indeed more people living
by the coastal zone. In the coastal zone and low
levels, I think there's something like 500 million
people live below. You know, 30 feet of elevation,
that's a large number. So there's really two ways to
view. This one is the amount of
Devastation is just linear with the number of people living on
the coast line and and is independent of any data that you
may or may not have just one more people in the Libyan Coast
Line. You're going to have more
damage. Okay.
That's one. One aspect.
The other one is let's do it. straight straight at the, look
at the data and let's not look at how many people are living
there and you look at the episodic events things that we
call for 10 years storms or 100 Year storms or Thousand Years
storms, what used to be a five hundred year storm in some areas
is now 100 Year storm because the statistics are changing and
it's not because we don't have more data, it's the data, we
Have is now being massively skewed by ongoing events, almost
by today's weather. And if you look at for instance,
simple thing the Mekong Delta or the Mississippi Delta, they
formed of the last 5,000 years generically you look what's
happened in Mississippi Delta, it's absolute ecological
disaster. Now, you might have an overlay
of really nice. Good sound bites of people that
are interested in doing business in the Mississippi River.
Delta But it's polluted, it's sinking and the people in the
coastal region are losing their land and their mineral rights as
our land subsides below the legal point of federal versus
private land ownership, and this is not imaginary.
So, what has been stable for 5000 years is now unstable.
The Mekong Delta is now unstable because Of Dykes, lots of Dykes
in Mississippi River, delta 2. So the dikes change, the flow of
water, they cause a flood to discharge lots of water, all of
a sudden, it flushes sediments out.
And hence, the Delta is not nourished with new settlements
and also, you have to buy more fertilizer to perform the
agricultural activities. So removing the humans from the
equation and just looking at the land.
Yeah, it's changing big. Time.
And there's lots of data, and we've got a call it geological
and geochemical data from Delta areas through sedimentology.
And other methods, that show that these things have been
relatively stable for the better part of five thousand years and
gee what a coincidence. Well, we've had relatively
stable, sea level for the last 4,000 years.
So hmm. All right.
Forget the people is just the Deltas are disappearing, and a
whole bunch of other things are changing.
Ross, you make up your mind. Yeah.
Well fair enough. Thanks for digging into that.
For me. You mentioned something that I
found very interesting in this book and there's a lot more to
say about it but the relationship between Shoreline
and property. And when private property goes
to public property as a result of changing sea level man, that
just sounds like a lawyers are going to get very rich off of
that. It sounds like is what I'm
trying to say. How exactly is that going to
work? What do you foresee?
Can you explain it to our audience?
Yeah. Property rights are defined in
different areas with different datums, but let's just use for
general purpose. The low low water line.
So, that's if you look at, well, it's just called low water line.
So if you average the low tides, that's generically under some
jurisdictions, where the property rights of the
individual and, and the federal government begin.
So imagine a slope of land One and 100 and you say it's one
foot vertical versus 100 feet out.
That means our be 1 meter versus 100 meters.
Doesn't matter. And you have a sea level rise of
6 inches on on that one and 100 slope.
Well, that means you're going to lose half of that distance.
That's 50 feet of coastal land. You can lose so that.
Piece of that demarcation were in a private landowners land
ended in the federal government took over, just moved back
towards the new Shoreline in favor of the federal government
and to the detriment of the private landowner and also the
mineral rights below. So, if you've got gas and oil
rights or you've been sand mining, or you got a shrimp farm
or whatever, sorry dude you just lost those.
I think you mentioned there to that some of some of these
seizures. Others by the government have
already happened in places, is it sort of pretty open-and-shut
legally? Does that just happen rather
easily relative to some prolonged suit, but depends on
who's on the land side. For sure of it, if it's, you
know gas and oil company that has some mineral rights granted
by an individual, they might fight for it if it's less
expensive than the federal government granting that Or vice
or conversely. So depends on which side of the
argument, your honor and how much money's on, which side and
they also stuck between States, you know, for instance, Georgia
and Florida and in legal battle, and California.
Arizona, New Mexico, they're all with water rights and discharges
on to beaches. And so, you know, somebody
builds a dam up stream, the sediments, don't reach the
coastal zone and then you get erosion and then your nice
little Beach. I've been there for five
thousand years in there anymore so there's all sorts of
litigation going on and I'm not in that field but it's easy to
research those if listeners interested, it's very much of
interest to me and I'll let you off the hook him up.
Make you socks, you much more about if it's not something that
you're actively researching this way.
But I hardly ever hear anyone speaking about this, I think in
general the ocean gets less attention than it.
Should for climate reasons, think ocean acidification is
really scary. I think some of these feedback
loops given the lags in the system, the interaction between
the atmosphere and the ocean, not being immediately visible.
In all the kinds of ways that I don't know, like some of those
Cycles take longer than maybe human brains are evolved to
notice how it feels counterintuitive to us.
So we end up looking at polar bears rather than the ocean in
some cases. Do you feel a bit neglected in
that way or my projecting onto you?
All right, my mother never neglected me Community overall
well as an oceanographer my focus has been the ocean, you
know, aquatic world's worked in lakes.
Also so we've been biased this you know, the Earth Sciences
have been biased towards liquid Earth.
So to say and 70% of the surface of the Earth is liquid and not.
70% of the world's population lives.
It see, that's quite the inverse.
It's very, very few people, live at Sea.
I've been lucky to have spent over five years of my life at
Sea. I've done nine, polar
Expeditions, your of my life. So I'm biased towards the
Aquatic world and the Earth. Some people refer to it as a cry
arose fear, you know, the atmosphere and and polar caps.
And The river system, the hydrological cycle, it's all
connected. Well, that is where most of the
photosynthesis takes place, somewhere between 50 and 80.
Percent of all photosynthesis taking place in the ocean and
large lakes. So you know we look at.
Yeah. The polar bear is in, do the sea
otters and you know, the dugongs and there.
Oh, terrible, terrible things. You know, the panda.
Has don't have any more bamboo but out at sea or species, we've
never heard of that are near the brink.
But that's it's not the chordata, not animals, with
spinal cords, it's the issue. You know, the as I mentioned,
the phytoplankton is really important and there's between
50, and 80% of the world's photosynthesis takes place at
Sea and one little dude, he's it's the smallest photosynthetic
organism on Earth prochlorococcus, I think has
pronounced the smallest organism that photosynthesizes.
Produces 20% of all oxygen, it's phenomenal.
It's it's microscopic we can't even see it.
And so below the Earth's surface, Internal waves, mixed
the oxygen-rich portions of the oceans with the upper ocean.
It causes this primary productivity to go on.
So when we starve, the oceans of river discharge the nutrients
that would go normally into the ocean.
Well, we're actually cutting off the necessary nutrients for
these phytoplankton. So, nobody's going out there and
saying hey, save the phytoplankton.
You can't even see these dudes, you know, but it's extremely
significant, I think 20% Percent of all Co to take up, is rather
significant for something in the ocean, but you can't see it.
What do you think of efforts that are typically called sea
salt like iron fertilization or ocean?
Fertilization of dropping iron shavings into the ocean, to
stimulate the growth of various types of Plankton that will die
float to the bottom of the sea floor and be a form of captured
carbon that I missed characterize it.
Not at all. You have mischaracterizing.
Luckily I knew John Martin, John Martin was the marine biologist
to I think originally recognized that iron was a limiting factor
and they call it ocean fertilization and they've been
several experiments been done. I think when somebody off the
Northwest no permits or anything, he's got a barge full
of iron, tailings and threw it in the ocean and measured
primary productivity and so well it went up so there's a lot.
You know, yes it's been not only theorized John Martin your
original guy but it some Wildcat people have actually even done
these experiments. I was involved with Japanese
group that did a very small-scale test of iron
fertilization and yes it works. And you mentioned the removal of
the carbon from the upper ocean. That's called sequestering.
So You know, somebody wants to grow a tree on earth, that's
great. Wonderful.
However, when that tree dies, it then decomposes in then once
again produces CO2 in that process.
So the marine organisms on the other hand when they die, they
go below the photic zone. That go beyond that.
Hi mixing Zone in the upper ocean.
They go beyond that. And they form the ocean
sediments like to have for millions of years.
It's who's that? You'll find all over the Deep.
Mmm, and that is a very valid way of sequestering carbon
dioxide. Now, if you can get something to
photosynthesize like kelp believe you mentioned something
about gulp, I know some people involved in that effort.
There are several efforts and that is a valid way if you allow
the organisms to die off into the deep ocean, that's a valid
way of getting rid of the carbon dioxide in the upper ocean.
For a few million years. That's a significant we can
figure it out in other ways and in the longer term.
Yeah, I think the iron fertilization stuff is
potentially riskier or Spooks people more than something like
growing kelp and dropping it into a deep enough part of the
ocean where it's really not mixing with the ocean enough to
come back. There's a group called Running
tide that is has been doing this.
I know Brian bomb hurts in who's been on the show a number of
times to talk about his Marine permaculture efforts super
Interesting. So stuff like that is going on
though, and I think it's getting more and more attention.
These days is that your experience to.
It's getting a lot more attention, unfortunately, I, you
know, you might call this a form of terraforming, you know, like
some size inside Phi is Bring It On terraforming, you know.
So they're people that are trying to spray aerosols in the
atmosphere to change the Albedo of the Earth, the Albedo is
basically Be the ratio of the incoming solar radiation versus
the reflected radiation, and if you increase the Albedo, that
means it more is being reflected out and that means that there's
less heat being retained in the greenhouse effect, but that
doesn't change the acidification of the oceans.
So sort of like the Sorcerer's. Apprentice You changed a little
something over here before. Oh, there's too many, if you
remember that Disney Fantasia kind of thing, you know, where
there's a fellow, trying to stop the flow of water, and the
inundation is just too great for the Innovative methods.
And I'm constantly reminded of that little cartoon in my head,
that we're like the Little Dutch boy, with the finger.
In the diet, you know, we're trying to stop something in a
very honest and concerted manner, but the complexity of it
is Way Beyond human comprehension and comprehension
and certainly Beyond political means the politics of this is
everybody's blaming everybody for everything.
But what really needs to be done is we need to make started sort
of city council level and have The codification really of
climate change implemented, which means that instead of
having city state federal, even super National entities
responding to disasters, it's better to address the root
problems than internally, combat the symptoms so that if you make
it legal for this, just take a city council.
To act. When you give some Metric, you
know, when a storm surge is above a certain level or when a
sea wall is breached at a certain height, some Metric.
And you codify that instead, he went into these things happens.
The city council is already empowered to do something.
Now, the Dutch of done that for a good part, better part of two
decades, they've got it right? They built this 400
million-dollar Rotterdam barrier and it's worked.
A couple of times, it's been around for 20 years.
Well, Hurricane Katrina was 50 or 100 billion dollars in
damage. Building with Abby, whereas the
Rotterdam barrier that they've used twice it, cost 400 million
Euros. So throw a dart say, 500 million
dollars. That's oh, that's a half a
percent. Well, that's good.
That's money. Good.
Well spent so if you haven't, if you take a short-term solution
to a long-term problem, you're continually spending and you
know, you can lease a car for a day and not worry about paying
long-term insurance cost, but then you still got at least at
the next day. So sometimes it's better to own
rather than lease and it seems almost like we're leasing our
environment rather than trading long-term solutions to these
problems. Okay.
Yeah, certainly feels. That way, sometimes, it feels
more like a payday loan kind of scenario.
Well, I did what I had asked, maybe, maybe it's good to
clarify because I'm not sure someone listening.
My fully gracht, your intention or are you saying that things
like solar radiation management are a form of leasing our
environment and are therefore bad or do you find that in Iron
fertilization to be risky climate Actions that we
shouldn't pursue or you in a research phase, how do you feel
about that should make sure it's clear.
My opinion, is that nature has certainly figured out how it
interacts with itself for, you know, life on Earth is
generically three and a half billion years old and it's
always changing. And it's got this Dynamic that
comes and goes and species arise and then they become extinct.
Things happen all the time. The environment will In you were
will prevail however what we're trying to do, you know, very
smart beings. However, our solution seemed
more short-term. So you know, Iron fertilization
is certainly a method, but we need to change our introduction
of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
That's a first order correction, but they're all sorts of other
things. I mean, we have wonderful
Seashore environments, Coastal regimes with fantastic
opportunities. Duties, for aquaculture for
recreation, for many other things yet, we find short-term
solutions that destroy the environment.
So they destroy the gold. We are eating our own Golden
Goose. So yes, we should try these
things but we should iterate fast enough to realize that what
we are currently doing. Does have long-term
repercussions, and those long-term repercussions.
Russians are in the multi decades not in just for your
election Cycles or two-year election Cycles.
What are some good Trends happening?
That people might not be aware of with regard to the
hydrological cycle. Oceans lakes, what are some
things that we might not be aware of?
Well you mentioned about fertilization efforts and kelp
kelp is a very nutritious entity.
It's it's the Asian cultures utilize kelp all the time.
So dealing with how we produce things that we consume and how
we treat our Watershed not polluting it, you know, fracking
introduces, millions of tons of very toxic stuff unfit for
humans into the aquifers so having Coastal.
So I look at it more from a coastal management.
Having Coastal efforts to maintain the health of the
sediment loads, the health of the quality of the water, those
things will pay back in time. You'll have more lobsters in the
coastal regions, more crabs, more fish.
But if you kill off the good things going into the The into
the coastal zone, you'll end up with a Mississippi River, delta
with dead zone. So the good things that we can
do is change it so that we don't do those things Upstream, you
know, one might ask, you know, what town?
Do you live in? Oh, I live in Houston or I live
in Miami. It's really not which town you
live. It's what watersheds you live
in. When you start looking at a, you
live in a watershed since the hydrological cycle.
Saul the sooner we realize that we're all connected within the
hydrological cycle, the better we can treat our environment and
our environment will treat us. Well, it's a big look, you know,
from high altitude on a low level.
What we can do is what happens Upstream of fix everybody
Downstream. Do things that have eat things
that produce fewer agricultural, wastes, don't support,
groundwater extractions, Rather than for absolutely necessary
things hydraulic fracking. As I mentioned earlier, puts all
sorts of stuff into the aquifers and unfit for human consumption.
Don't try and decrease fossil fueled dependencies reduce CO2
emissions. And you know, these and our
nature will reward us. You know, we live in a very
fruitful Planet, if we disregard, what's Downstream
eventually, everything is polluted and And unfortunately,
regardless where you live, we all live Downstream of climate
change. Can I have a few questions from
our patrons on patreon and these are listener submitted and if
you're less than and you'd like to do this, you can join no
worries patreon where we do a book club, it's a lot of fun and
occasionally questions will come out ahead of time that I'll
write down. And yeah, so okay the first
question here, a little bit door but I'm hoping you can give us a
positive answer which is about my Microplastics what is
happening with them? And how can we get them out of
the ocean? A microplastics is a global
problem as we we'll know and as before you know, stream be
careful what you do. Try not to utilize things that
are in plastic packages and the weights and beaches has about
150 references of all sorts. And some of those refer to
Plastics and microplastics Six, there are some International
efforts, I think one of them out of the Netherlands where there
are large vessels in booms, if you will that collect from the
oceans garbage, patches. This large gyres of floating
Plastics and debris and we need to reduce our dependency on the
hydrocarbon /. Plastic production because
remember that Plastics are made primarily from hydrocarbons and
the sooner we can wean ourselves off of that cycle.
The more reduction will be in the plastic detritus and that's
a big cycle that people need to look at once again, in the end
notes and references for raising beaches, there's all sorts of
stuff referring to that's Well, thank you.
I'm sure they'll appreciate that.
And we have a second one that I like, it made me laugh.
Here goes, I'm going to read her words.
She says lately, my two-year-old daughter has been asking to see
quote, mommy whales and baby wails unquote.
So I'll search on Instagram and there's some footage shot by
drones and even on a little phone screen, it gives both she
and I such a sense of awe at these gorgeous beings, as much
as I would love to see them in real life.
I don't want to be Person in their habitat but do video
drones bother Wildlife a lot. What do oceanographers say about
that? So speak for the oceanographers
Kim. Okay I've got my oceanographer
had on here groans. Do not substantially influence.
Any behavior of any whale in the ocean?
What does influence them? Is shipping.
Shipping noise has increased over 100 fold in the last 50
years. So You know container ships,
their propellers turn they go around, they make a lot of
noise, those certainly disrupt the feeding patterns in
migratory patterns of Wales. So little drones and small boats
aren't going to harm a whale in its normal behavior.
In many cases, whale swim up to boats to smaller boats but large
fifty thousand. Ton hundred thousand ton
freighters. Container cargo ships.
Those discharge lot of energy, so sound into the ocean and
whale navigate and communicate using sound.
So it's as if you've got a jet plane going by, you know, every
two minutes, it disrupts your conversational patterns and it
eventually just move on to another room.
So don't worry about the drones. Enjoy it there.
Wonderful. Animals.
I've been lucky to swim with whale.
I've been very close to well many, many times in and out of
the water and their magnificent animals to observe close and
afar. All right, it says she and her
daughter have your blessing to enjoy those YouTube videos.
Oh, absolutely. Just as long as you're not film
from a hundred thousand ton container vessels, all right,
that's good. Good for them then.
Well, if people want to learn more, where can they get your
book, how can they support it? What can they do?
The Third Edition of waves, and beaches is being published by
Patagonia? You can find it at Patagonia.com
and you can also find The book, waves, and beaches Amazon, and
wherever books are sold. I really suggest if you're
interested in going a little bit deeper, you can look at the
references in waves and beaches that refers to not only two
books and peer-reviewed papers, but also to Coastal management
plans. Things that people have already
done. So cities and countries.
They've already implemented Coastal management plans.
There's about 10 or 15 of those plans in the references in the
appendices of waves and Beach is.
So if you want to dig deeper, there's plenty of stuff in waves
and beaches for every level of reader, the over 150 photographs
are heavily annotated, and captioned.
So that you don't have to dive into the intricacies of wave,
Celerity in order to enjoy the book.
It's Everyone can enjoy great links to all of those things are
in the show notes. Thanks so much for being here.
Kim, great, and thank you for having me, Ross.
It's been my pleasure and if you like the show, please tell a
friend rate and review us on Apple podcasts or iTunes.
Helps us. Get the show out to more people
than thank you so much for all of your support and for
listening. But thank you so much for
listening if You like the show, please rate and review it in
apple podcast and or Stitcher. It really helps us a lot to get
this content to a wider audience.
If you think what we're doing is useful, interesting fun.
Hopefully, all three, we certainly appreciate your rating
and review. You can keep up with Nori at nor
e.com where there is a newsletter that's Nori
.com/srobiyt. There's podcast, there's a whole
bunch else or you can send us an email at podcast at nor e.com.
We are also now on patreon at patreon.com slash Nori podcasts,
if you'd like more content engagement and community.
And thank you so much for your support.