[Intro music, ocean sounds]
Welcome to World Ocean Radio…
I’m Peter Neill, Director of the World Ocean Observatory.
I fancy myself a bit of a wordsmith, a fooler-around with words of all sounds, shapes, and sizes, put into some sort of order that may or may not make sense. I once read the medical encyclopedia for A to Z and from entomology, puns, and play, wrote a novel. I came across a word yesterday that took me by surprise, first, that I had not heard it before; second, that it pertained so directly to the ocean.
Eustasy: defined as “a change of sea level through-out the world, caused typically by the melting of glaciers.” We are aware of global warming, of the potential melting of glaciers and polar shelves, of sea level rise already affecting the consequence of changing air and water temperatures, ocean circulation, associated weather patterns, increasing global example of storm, erosion, flash-flooding, and unheard-of damage to the land and city-scape worldwide. The situation is so dire that even the insurance companies cannot assimilate the risk analysis for profit and are withdrawing from the business of protection.
According to the US Geological Survey, the distribution of Earth’s water is as follows:
• 97.2% is in the oceans and inland seas
• 2.1% is in glaciers
• 0.6% is in groundwater and soil moisture
• less than 1% is in the atmosphere
• less than 1% is in lakes and rivers
• less than 1% is in all living plants and animals.
Only 2% in the glaciers? It seems too small, but scientific estimates suggest that if current trends in rising temperature continue at the present rate, the associated melt could raise sea level near-term by a foot or more worldwide, more in some places according to specific geography and geology. If all the ice sheet melts, longer-term the rise is estimated at 100 feet or more.
It seems we live in an eustatic world. Who knew?
If all the land mass on earth was gathered together it would constitute on 29% of the surface, 71% being the space filled by this ever-growing, temperature-driven melt that has no volumetric place to go but up. And yet at the same time, those of us on that land are finding available freshwater diminished or polluted and unavailable for our consumption by drink or use for irrigation, sanitation, and manufacture. It’s a confusion paradox: all this water, even increasing, and yet less and less to drink and more and more threatening to our security and health. We are caught in a circular consternation; which way to look, which way to go, which way to escape from circumstance to survival?
This process is well under way. Eustasy is all around us – irreversible and perverse. There is no way to backward; we must hold fast and lean forward. But how?
Some weeks ago on World Ocean Radio, I offered a distillation of the five areas of our existence where the ocean matters most: the ocean/freshwater continuum, energy, food, health, and exchange. Let me offer a distillation of that distillation, a reduction to the one solution, oddly eustatic in nature, that lies at the core of our future:
We cannot live without fresh water. And there is only one place to go to get it: the ocean, volumetrically expanded, not as an enemy but an ally. And there is only one technology to be pursued: for the efficient, adequate desalination of salt water to fresh, to be equitably distributed in equal amount to everyone on Earth as a basic human right. We are globally connected by that need, and inherent in the provision of that life-sustaining supply are certain principles of equity and justice that cannot, must not, be compromised by capital or government control. The ocean is the global commons, the democratic source and solution by which to assure our survival. If we are distracted by politics and profit, by greed and selfishness, we will all decline together. It will not be pretty. We must understand that water is THE basic need for all people for all time, and its assurance lies not in clever wordsmithing, but in a deed, an action taken through technology applied, to guarantee the one natural resource upon which we all depend.
Water is truth; and there is no denying.
We will discuss these issues, and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
[Outro music, ocean sounds]
eustacy
noun
eu·sta·cy ˈyüstəsē
Worldwide change of sea level as contrasted with
local diastrophic uplift or subsidence of the land.
