The Oceans ‘drift

On the 10th November, we went to the Palais de l’Europe in Menton to participate in Environment Day. During this special day, we took part in several conferences and workshops organized by our teachers.

Mainly, we spoke about mosquitoes, the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions on the environment, how to save the planet and the oceans. We learnt more about oceans thanks to Lionel Guidi.

Lionel Guidi is a CNRS researcher from Villefranche-sur-Mer, he wrote his thesis in this same city and traveled around the world while studying . He's now studying the oceans to understand them better and this depends on its chemical, physical and biology, the interaction between these three elements is very important.

The climate and oceans are linked because there is a climate machine (the water cycle, the heat cycle and the carbon cycle). But also because the oceans represent 70% of the surface of the Earth, 97% of the water available on Earth, 50% of the oxygen we breathe (due to plankton) and the oceans absorb 93% of Co2 every day due to human activity.

because of this Co2 too present, the water level increases one step at a time and its acidity is increasingly high, which could result in the extinction of many sea animals (around 30% of the biodiversity) whereas others could easily adapt.

Thus, we asked Lionel Guidi several questions;

“Have you found some solutions?

- The objective of a researcher is not to propose solutions; his purpose is to make a report.

- How do you make reports?

- First of all to make a report means that we establish a general state of the ecosystem.

- We do it by means of taking on the chemistry and the biology of the oceans thanks to rather modern techniques. For example, other researchers and I left for oceanographic campaign for 3 years to know the diversity of the species in the sea and how the environment influences its species there.”

So Mr.Guidi explained during his conference that experiences on the climate are realized by the man (Increase of the temperatures and the acidity in the oceans) to look how these changes influence the various organisms. The human made changes are short-lived and allow to see what climate change could damage in the long term.

All these changes lead to a heavy impact on the economy and on the health of the human race but also on the biodiversity on Earth.

The researchers set up pessimistic scenarios to motivate humans so that they act quickly to avoid the possible extinction of the human race.

Finally Lionel Guidi informed us that the oceans are excluded from any negotiations during the Cop21 given that they belong to everybody.

This day allowed us to become aware of the meaning of the word “environment”. Indeed, we realized that even at our level of mere teenagers, we can change the world. Every action is important in this type of big change. This special opened our eyes on the importance and the emergency of this problem. This is a priority if we want to pass on to our future generations a world livable, viable and fair.

A world which has undergone sustainable development. 

During this day, we really understood that our planet is in danger and we realized that we had to become aware of it in order to save our oceans thus our planet.

2^nd Euro Institution Saint-Joseph – Carnolès

Cuncu, Farine, Soler, Langlois