Ocean iron fertilization. Source: Woods Hole
From the best laid plans of mice and men department.
In the late 1980’s, the late John Martin advanced the idea that carbon uptake during plankton photosynthesis in many regions of the world’s surface ocean was limited not by light or the major nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus, but rather by a lack of the trace metal iron. Correlations between dust input to the ocean (which is the major source of iron) and past climate changes and CO2 levels, led Martin’s to exclaim “Give me half a tanker of iron and I’ll give you the next ice age”.
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute wrote a paper about it Effects of Ocean Fertilization with Iron to Remove Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere Reported April 2004 News Release from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
From Slashdot and New Scientist:
Earlier this month, the controversial Indian-German Lohafex expedition fertilised 300 square kilometres of the Southern Atlantic with six tonnes of dissolved iron.
This triggered a bloom of phytoplankton, which doubled their biomass within two weeks by taking in carbon dioxide from the seawater. The dead phytoplankton were then expected to sink to the ocean bed, dragging carbon along with them. Instead, the experiment turned into an example o f how the food chain works, as the bloom was eaten by a swarm of hungry copepods.
While the experiment failed to show ocean fertilization as a viable carbon storage strategy, it has pushed the old “My dog ate my homework” excuse to an unprecedented level.
h/t to Dan Watts (no relation)
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Crosspatch – you are correct. Nearly all AGW “wanna-believers” in fact have a bias against (or an envy of) development & growth, technological progress, corporations, capitalism, success, etc.
Branding CO2 to be an evil poison just fits too nicely into their belief systems. Accordingly, they chose not to question the validity and will always accept it to be a fact.
This is not to imply that these folks are in any way disingenuous. It is the nature of the human mind to readily accept information that supports strongly held beliefs and to just as readily filter out information that is contrary.
We who question AGW are also guilty. Don’t we get a much greater “serotonin rush” when the monthly global temperatures fall, thus validating our belief that it is more about the Sun and nature and not so much about CO2?
Fortunately, over time, wisdom prevails. It will prevail when those in middle, whose minds can be changed understand the truth. We all can thank Mr. Watts (and perhaps a very dormant Sun) for shortening the amount of time that this will take.
“Just because it wound up in the stomach of a fish instead of the sea floor is not the issue”
If it made it to the stomach of a fish, it will make it to the sea floor, albeit in different form.
I think the origin of all these newly concocted theories is the need for survival of the involved scientists: they propose a research to be made (whatsoever you can imagine…you got to live!), then they get, if well or appropriately concocted, the funding.
What happens afterwards….you see, just “roses, roses”
Thanks god there are people who really work, like, you know, Thomas Alva Edison, etc. and thanks god, and fortunately, those newly babyboomers scientists can not change what they thought they could, like climate or planet venus temperature. 🙂
For the posters who don’t get it. The experiment is a failure because the fish return almost all the CO2 back to the environment by burning the phytoplankton in their bodies. Just like humans burn wheat in their bodies.
Does this mean there is a biological aspect to life on earth? Could biological issues also affect the climate?
[Sarcasm off]
My understanding is Lohafex wanted to sell carbon offsets. It doesn’t matter if the experiment worked or not. It only matters if they can make a profit on it. If government mandates are in play, then it still may be profitable.
Don’t laugh when somebody proposes to kill off the copepods in order to save the planet.
Off topic but has anyone noticed the lack of coverage about the snow in Texas and Oklahoma and Kansas? Forcast of 8to14 in. along the entire pan handle with life threatening conditions for anyone caught out in this storm.They mention the snow in Denver but nothing about the other states or how rare this is given it’s spring.And as for the flooding in North Dakota I pray for those people but nothing is mentioed as to what caused it to begin.They have had a record snowfall season beating it by over 25 inches.Where is the coverage on this or lack there of?You know it just does’t go with AGW propaganda .
WakeUpMaggy (07:34:04) :
“I would think red dust blown into the oceans from deserts would be the natural version of this experiment.”
Yes, Of course!. And all the rivers that discharge on the 7 seas. Could you imagine how many times nature outnumbers fools’ experiments, and..of course nature uses ferric oxides instead of ferrous sulphate.
JeffK,
If the gaseous CO2 was converted to ‘solid’ carbonates and then eaten, the digestive acids would then redissolve the solid carbonates back to gaseous CO2. This would have been re-released back into the ocean.
The net effect, I believe, would be very little sequestration ending up on the ocean floor due to the iron experiment. Just a recycling back to dissolved ocean gas as it was in the beginning.
Jim
Roger Knights (07:02:35) : “But it’s great for the whales, ”
There is an academic article out there that raised concern about whale flatulence increasing methane in the atmosphere. The biomass of the large whales makes them a noticeable contributor of atmospheric CO2 through respiration and a carbon sink through lunch.
It appears to me that a robust cycle of life through primary and secondary production naturally leads to increased CO2. If one’s obsessive fear is of that minor gas and the only way to assuage that fear is to reduce it, the logical solution is to curtail the cycle of life.
Note: whale do not take CO2 out of the atmosphere, but do emit tonnes daily. Perhaps the AGW folks in Greenpeace would therefore advocate killing all the whales. (Paul Watson would violently oppose that notion.)
I like Dyson’s engineered trees better.
“If the gaseous CO2 was converted to ’solid’ carbonates and then eaten, the digestive acids would then redissolve the solid carbonates back to gaseous CO2”
Some, yes, but not all. Fish excrement contains a rather high concentration of calcium carbonate.
So the more dissolved calcium in the water, the more the fish make “gut rocks” that end up on the ocean floor.
The big discovery here is the find that copepods never ever poop….even bigger was the discovary that animals that eat copepods don’t ever poop either.
Some of the carbon ends up as flesh on the predators. If there is more food, the predators grow more quickly and/or there are more predators more quickly than without the fertilization. More waste from the predators ends up on the ocean floor more quickly. There should be some increased carbon sequestration, although it is harder for the researchers to quantify.
The research was a failure only in producing the result which the researchers expected. The result was more complex than they expected, but the researchers do seem to confirm that there was an increase of the small creatures of the food chain after their fertilization.
Symon (08:02:02) :
For the posters who don’t get it. The experiment is a failure because the fish return almost all the CO2 back to the environment by burning the phytoplankton in their bodies. Just like humans burn wheat in their bodies.
So living creatures are CO2 sinks?
Fine but what’s wrong about storing carbon in whales? 😉 A whale is a natural gadget that does a lot of work more efficiently than the devices envisioned by many geo-engineers. We can grow a few million of cute and lovely whales (and sharks) who will store the carbon for us. 🙂
Thank god. These geoengineering kooks scare the crap out of me.
Re: 3×2 (07:19:01) :
“More worrying is that as the hype gets shriller and the “schemes” get more insane eventually some real damage will be done.”
This worries me a great deal as well. The fact that the experiment failed only adds weight to the arguement that these clowns have no clue what they are doing and they will get us all killed.
These environmental fundamentalists are cursing the western world for the evil artifical tinkering of the atmosphere through CO2 emissions. Why is their tinkering any different? I’d argue its worse, because its a much more dramatic step-change perturbation to the climate system than a slow increase of life-benefiting gas over a long period of time. Their tinkering is the equivalent of poking an atomic pile in a nuclear reactor with a stick.
Someone, please stop these idiots now….
Ken Caldeira at Stanford! The hollowing out of Academia is more advanced than I’d feared.
NEWSFLASH…NEWSFLASH…NEWSFLASH…NEWSFLASH…
Scientists find complex system of unknown and unpredictable interactions behaves nothing like their models predict.
This kind of abject stupidity must be stopped in its tracks. In fact, these clowns should probably be thrown in jail. Have these so-called “scientists” not learned from experiments like introducing cane toads in Australia and other such idiotic concepts?
JeffK (07:46:22) :
Sorry, but I must dissagree with the findings of the report – the experiment *did* work!! The whole point was to transfer the carbon which was in a gasious solution in the water (I believe that is the correct way to explain it) to a solid form in the phytoplankton and this *did* occur. Just because it wound up in the stomach of a fish instead of the sea floor is not the issue. The transfer from a gas to a solid took place…which was the whole point. It is the gasious form of the carbon which is increasing in the atmosphere.
We must also consider the large amount of methane released in fish flatulencies, rotting of zooplankton and fish corpses, etc. 🙂
Crosspatch 06 55 08
has posted probably one of the most significant links ever to appear in this Blog. I followed it through to the UN paper which-if true-is dynamite and IMHO warrants a thread by itself so as not to hijack this one.
Here is the link right through to the UN Discussion document
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/032709_informationnote.pdf
it is indeed a UN document to reorder the world
Whilst everyone should scrutinise each line in order to see what we had always believed was an agenda behind the IPCC (they couldn’t seriously believe all their models could they) some highlights are
Page 6 item 17
page 8 item 25 and 27
page 9 item 34
page 10 item 37
page 14 item 60
Conclusions on p15
Any comments from anyone?
Tonyb
WakeUpMaggy (07:34:04):
I would think red dust blown into the oceans from deserts would be the natural version of this experiment.
Adolfo Giurfa (08:09:19):
WakeUpMaggy (07:34:04) :
“I would think red dust blown into the oceans from deserts would be the natural version of this experiment.”
Yes, Of course!. And all the rivers that discharge on the 7 seas. Could you imagine how many times nature outnumbers fools’ experiments, and..of course nature uses ferric oxides instead of ferrous sulphate.
Indeed… Red and black winds also drag virus which kill corals. Another experiment, although no natural, has been the discharges of detergents and other organic wastes to rivers, creeks, lagoons, etc. The final effect is similar. Something worrisome is the consumption of oxygen dissolved in water, which is consumed quickly by the excessive population of animals and aquatic plants causing an acceleration of the ecological succession.
Same effect as the one here?
“When deep water is vented, it brings not only CO2 to the surface but nutrients. Phytoplankton consume the extra nutrients and multiply.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/12/wind-shifts-may-stir-co2-from-antarctic-depths/
It also looks at plankton spikes, which means biomass increase. Hard to see how it could be all bad, more fish food = more fish.