So said American oceanographer John Martin. And these guys believe him:
Planktos Inc., which has offices in Vancouver and San Francisco, wants to set sail this month from Florida to dump more than 45 tonnes of iron dust into the sea near the Galapagos Islands.
The iron nutrients would stimulate the growth of phytoplankton, which would then absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide - an experimental process Planktos compares to reforestation.
A for-profit "ecorestoration" company, Planktos plans to sell carbon credits from this and other projects to firms such as Vancouver's Wedgewood Hotel and Spa, which has agreed to buy 5,000 tonnes of carbon credits.
However, they're running into a couple of problems. For one thing, the American Environmental Agency has complained that the company has not provided any information on the potential environmental impacts of the plan, and are worried that the project would lead to toxic algae blooms, that the decomposing plankton masses would release other greenhouse gases or choke off the oxygen supply in the deep ocean.
For another thing, recent research has shown that this kind of ocean seeding is
...10 to 100 times less efficient than the naturally occurring processes, in increasing CO2 capture through the biological pump.
And in fact using the ocean as a carbon sink increases its acidification, which brings problems of its own.
3 comments:
why ??
June 18, 2007
Framing global warming
Clarice Feldman
Professor Bryson, the father of scientific climatology says anthropogenic global warming is hooey. Naturally whenever scientists who do know what they are talking about offend the dogmatists, they are said to be going against the "scientific consensus". Science is science. Consensus is politics. And close examination of many of those part of that "consensus" reveals they are not climatologists,but grant seekers. From the Capital Times:
Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology, considers global warming a bunch of hooey.
The UW-Madison professor emeritus, who stands against the scientific consensus on this issue, is referred to as a global warming skeptic. But he is not skeptical that global warming exists, he is just doubtful that humans are the cause of it.
There is no question the earth has been warming. It is coming out of the "Little Ice Age," he said in an interview this week.
"However, there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and carbon dioxide. We've been coming out of a Little Ice Age for 300 years. We have not been making very much carbon dioxide for 300 years. It's been warming up for a long time," Bryson said.
The Little Ice Age was driven by volcanic activity. That settled down so it is getting warmer, he said.
Humans are polluting the air and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but the effect is tiny, Bryson said.
[snip]""There is a lot of money to be made in this," he added. "If you want to be an eminent scientist you have to have a lot of grad students and a lot of grants. You can't get grants unless you say, 'Oh global warming, yes, yes, carbon dioxide.'"
[snip] Reporters will often call the meteorology building seeking the opinion of a scientist and some beginning graduate student will pick up the phone and say he or she is a meteorologist, Bryson said. "And that goes in the paper as 'scientists say.'"
The word of this young graduate student then trumps the views of someone like Bryson, who has been working in the field for more than 50 years, he said. "It is sort of a smear."
The UW-Madison professor emeritus
Most professors emeriti I know display early signs of senile dementia. Most of them can't even handle a bank machine.
*snort*
"And in fact using the ocean as a carbon sink increases its acidification, which brings problems of its own."
I have no idea if this iron fertilization of phytoplankton is a good idea or not, but this issue you bring up is certainly not one of the potential problems.
This is not a method for dissolving more CO2 in the oceans, which would (other things being equal) increase the acidity -- actually decrease the alkalinity for the forseeable future. This is a method for helping the plants to convert CO2 into carbohydrates, cellulose etc. through photosynthesis. Not at all the same thing.
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