Ocean-seeding experiment re-ignites geo-engineering debate

Making new oil?

Granted, it'll be a while until it's ready to use.

Do it

could be a right laugh.

Banded iron deposits for the distant future!

Awesome variation of recycling :-)

It's very hard to understand a system

when you're part of it.

"The core of the argument is also simple: it’s probably impossible to predict what other environmental impacts phytoplankton fertilization would have."

Let me see if I've understood this argument. Dumping CO2 in the atmosphere is bad because it might (on extreme scenarios) turn the Earth into Venus Mk2 and will almost certainly lead to very bad things happening. But doing anything about it is bad because we don't understand what the environmental impact would be.

So I suppose we're just left with reducing CO2 output. But this has two tiny flaws:

1. it won't happen - at least, not by dictat or voluntary action, though we will inevitably run out of carbon to burn in the very long term;

2. it has very bad consequences of its own, i.e. civilisation ends.

What am I missing?

how much carbon is burned

to make the iron sulphate? There's loads of iron pyrites about but to stick a couple of oxygen molecules on it takes a bit of energy.

Then there's always the possibility of living creatures eating the plankton bloom before it falls to the ocean floor.

Or some company working out how to harvest plankton for power.... That may sound daft Halifax Nova Scotia runs its buses on fish oil...

You have to be kidding

We cant even predict the weather accurately and now we want to fuck around with it - is there no end to our arrogance?

Could be a practical way to slow CO2

Phytoplankton carbon sequestration would seem to hold promise. At reasonable expense, carbon is extracted from the air, and sequestered as carbon snow on the deep sea bed.

Of course there are real risks, so we need to be really sure of the effects of a given amount of iron seeding. My thinking is that, spread over a large expanse of ocean, the negative effects of such seeding might be minimised and acceptable.

Safeguards would need to be in place - monitoring of effects, and capping the level of seeding in any given area of ocean.

Given the potential benefit in slowing the growth of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, I hope this is given serious consideration.

FFS

"Smetacek is aware of the unanswered questions, and told Nature the Alfred Wegener Institute will not conduct any further fertilization experiments."

That is absolutely fucking ridiculous.

Grr.

OK, so we know iron fertilisation works. This experiment, earlier experiments, the Oz red oxide dust mentioned above, Saharan similar into the Atlantic.

We also know that it could be greatly improved: some areas of the ocean are known to be solely iron deficient. Others are known to be both iron and silicic acid deficient. The addition of both would produce much more sequestration. Quite apart from anything else, it's the silicic acid which limits diatom growth.

The downsides? Sure, only some of the carbon sinks to the ocean floor to become sedimentary rock in due time. The rest is eaten. So, anyone think that creating vast new fisheries is a serious problem? And the fish poop from them goes to the ocean floor again anyway.

But above all else iron fertilisation is so bloody cheap the cost is, by any reasonable scale, nothing.

We are talking of 50 cents to $2 per tonne CO2 sequestrated. Iron just ain't that expensive and 1 tonne into the water gets 3,000 tonnes CO2 into the plankton (of which only a portion is sequestrated). Hell, you don't even need iron. That "red mud" that went splat all over Hungary a couple of years ago would do. 40% Fe and it also provides the silicic acid needed.

Compare this with plastering Germany with solar cells: $1070 per tonne CO2 not emitted.

No, it ain't a complete solution: there's not enough ocean that is iron deficient to absorb all the emissions. But it sure as hell helps and it's the cheapest sodding thing anyone has ever managed to come up with.

And they're going to stop the experiments?

Seriously, are we being ruled by crazed fucking lunatics? Anyone actually serious about climate change would stick £20-£30 million into this immediately.

"Smetacek is aware of the unanswered questions, and told Nature the Alfred Wegener Institute will not conduct any further fertilization experiments."

"That is absolutely fucking ridiculous."

A scientist abandoning a specific area of study because other methods could provide more information is ridiculous ... sorry fucking ridiculous ?

I would prefer the term rational.

Your response is valid if you are willing to completely disregard any possible side-affects, apparently because it's "cheap". Those pesky scientists don't seem to agree with you. Thankfully.

i am all for being green and putting the rubbish in the bins but i this iron seed idea goes too far and should be stopped. all i worry is that the iron the scientists put in the ocean will stick to the fishes and the fishes will get weighted down and sink even more than they usually sink and then before we know it there are no fishes left which means no more fish fingers in the shops. ok eventually fish would recover by evolution they would grow legs so they can walk on the ocean floor even covered in iron but that might take 1 million years and even then once they have legs whats to stop them all walking out of the sea? i suppose 1 million years is enough time for us to build fences along all the beaches to keep the fishes in the sea but if fukusheema taught us anything its that expected suenarmys can ruin the best laid plans. plus i dont think fishfingers would be the same if fish had legs, they wouldn't stack in the boxes propely.

"Destroying the planet to save it"

Sounds like a good idea - accelerating what nature does anyway.

So scaremongering, bedwetting Greenies like Richard Chirgwin must STOP IT AT ALL COSTS.

Not related, but...

whenever I read the word debated I imagine "mastu" in front of it.

In this instance it worked really well.

the topic is fiercely debated

haha, fierce masturbation.

God bless Friday's

It is about the Methane MUCH more than the CO2

This stuff is trying to bail out the Titanic. Methane is 75 times a greenhouse-reactive as CO2 (fact). Methane in the atmosphere is up 2.6% in 15 YEARS (fact). If you don't fix the Methane, no noticeable good will come from lowering CO2.

In general, I am in favor of lowering mankinds carbon loading. I just feel that everyone is on the CO2 bandwagon. CO2 is just not NEARLY as important as Methane.

We need to know our options

I know that this magazine leans heavily into kooky global warming denial, so the somewhat derogotory comment in the title is more of the same..

There are some environmentalist that are appalled that we would consider doing more changes to the environment rather than just cutting back on our CO2 emissions. I don't agree.

Even though the research has not yet concluded that we've passed a tipping point, it's very likely we already have gone way too far with our CO2 emissions. Since it is possible that we have already passed a tipping point that in turn leads into huge, dangerous changes, we need to research all the ways we can mitigate what we have already done, and this ocean seeding seems like a reasonable way to undo about 10-15% of the problem. We just need a few other ways as well.

Sure there are going to be some undesirable consequences from some of the methods. Putting things in orbit to block the sun, or deliberately simulating volcanic emissions into the high atmosphere would cool things off, but alter precipitation patterns in undesirable ways. Even so, undesirable effects of the CO2 we have already put into the atmosphere are likely to get far worse, so we may have to be willing to take desperate measures.

We need to do the research now, while there is some time to evaluate the downsides and benefits of various mitigation methods.