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)
“But human’s can do damage to the environment. China is polluting the air. Over fishing is damaging the oceans. These changes aren’t natural; they are caused by us. China can put scrubbers on their coal fired power plants and fishing can be done in a sustainable manner. And unlike global warming/cooling, these changes are within our control.”
I agree with all of the above. We shouldn’t be irresponsible. But the notion that we can “protect” sea temperatures is a little “out there”.
Re: crosspatch (22:29:32) and capitalism.
While it may be viewed by some as harsh, I tend to agree with you. Profitable businesses and healthy economies, just like electricity generation, light in our homes, heating, air conditioning and medicines are critical for human advancement. With everything going on in the economy currently, it is easy to fall into the trap of believing capitalism=evil (just like electric power=evil, coal trains=evil, co2=evil etc.).
I’m not a believer in some big conspiracy here, though the UN articles some have linked to in this chain are very disturbing. However, I think it is clear that there is a growing momentum around the idea that capitalism=evil, western world=evil, power generation=evil, “big oil”=evil, cars=evil, co2=evil, etc, etc, etc. It is a kind of “technological depression” – a self perpetuating ideal in which human advancement is seen as a bad thing. Some would tie it to a “dumbing of society” – make the masses clueless, and every time you say “boo” they will come running like sheep to the trough willing to pay extra taxes to stave off a threat that does not exist.
It really appears that the enviromental extremists for example will not be happy until the human race are all living in dark biodegradable hovels with a biodegradable windmill outside for electric power, rationed ecologically friendly water, rationed breathing (the CO2!), biodegradable tofu (solent green?) for food and daily chanting, prayer and sacrifice to “Mother Earth”, lest she throw a tornado, hurricane, earthquake or pestilence upon us. Sound like the regilious repression of the Dark Ages anyone?
We have to shake ourselves and realise that just like the clueless climate modelers don’t understand the complex real climate, the clueless iron filling scientists don’t understand real ecology or climate, there are many people setting policies right now that are equally clueless and are basing their policies on the entire clueless pyramid of “settled science” and computer model output underneath them.
Time to wake up and smell the coffee all you sheep and lemmings. Try reading a few books, doing some research and thinking for yourself for once. Unless you like the idea of being a worker ant in a colony that is.
I wrote: “The only problem with that approach though is that not all of marine life are created equal and reproduce that fast. ”
Crosspatch replied: “True but we can’t go around “saving” them to death either. Or “saving” one” thing that causes other things to suffer. An example might be whales wandering into fresh water rivers. Who “saved” them before we arrived? That is probably part of the natural balance of things. They wander up the river, get sick or stuck and die. Their carcass serves as food for birds, crabs, small species and immature large species of fish, and all sorts of other life. “Saving” those whales prevents other ecosystems from flourishing.”
In the case of sharks, something needs to be done. They have ruled the oceans for 450 million years, keeping the entire oceanic food web in balance. And now many of their kind are threatened with extinction.
This following is sums it all up from Scripps Oceanographer Jeremy Jackson:
“Taken together, these problems [in the ocean] risk “transforming once complex ecosystems like coral reefs and kelp forests into monotonous level bottoms, transforming clear and productive coastal seas into anoxic dead zones, and transforming complex food webs topped by big animals into simplified, microbially dominated ecosystems with boom and bust cycles of toxic dinoflagellate blooms, jellyfish, and disease.”
Chris
Norfolk, VA
Crosspatch wrote: “But in any case, attempting a logical discussion with someone who obviously has a strong emotional attachment to the subject of the discussion is usually futile.”
Logic and emotion under one roof is by far not a “futile” combination. To the contrary…such a combination is what makes us human and what gives us the ability and passion to solve problems.
Watch the award-winning docu-drama called Sharkwater. If you have not seen it, besides being a physically stunning piece of cinema, it will change the way you think about sharks and their importance on the planet.
Best,
Chris
Norfolk, VA
Mike Ramsey wrote: “But human’s can [and] do damage to the environment. China is polluting the air. Over fishing is damaging the oceans. These changes aren’t natural; they are caused by us. China can put scrubbers on their coal fired power plants and fishing can be done in a sustainable manner. And unlike global warming/cooling, these changes are within our control.
You have hit the nail on the head Mike.
And Pamela’s words about fisheries understanding the many oscillations that govern the oceans are on point too.
The fisheries management system needs to be overhauled to reflect such, but that is another topic for another day I guess.
Chris the sharkman.
Norfolk, VA
Correction: “fisheries NEEDING to understand the many oscillations that govern the oceans…
David Gladstone (13:31:48) :
(1) Why does iron fertilization cause algae productivity to rise?
Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization
“Iron is a trace element necessary for photosynthesis in all plants, however it is highly insoluble in sea water and is often the limiting nutrient for phytoplankton growth. Large phytoplankton blooms can be created by supplying iron to iron-deficient ocean waters.”
Also, see http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v383/n6600/abs/383508a0.html
(2) Why does consumption of the algae negate carbon sequestration?
The idea behind sequestering carbon in the deeps is (my words):
1. Coccolithophores, the remains of organisms that feed on them, and fecal matter sink, by force of gravity, into the deep ocean.
2. The remains are buried in sediment where they stay a long time.
Microorganisms can break down these remains and turn the carbon back into CO2 where it can find its way back into the atmosphere. Also, organic carbon and calcite falling to the sea floor can drive changes in the ocean’s pH to maintain steady state. Like most things in nature, there are negative feedbacks that keep things in balance. Still, there is a lot of limestone out there. 🙂
–Mike Ramsey
Who is behind the UN and the CAGW movement? Haven’t you been watching the Fed? The Fed/IMF/World bank and the major central banks are all just names on doors at castle in Basel, where the 11 real masters of the universe make the monetary decisions for the rest of us. The Fed is owned by holding companies, 11 to be precise, which are private and mostly foreign, residing in the City of London. Did no one think to ask where the Fed got the extra trillions they just printed? They just took it from the man hours of every person in the US and Europe and the rest of the world; instantly, in less than the blink of an eye. Notice how Volcker took $5T from struggling countries in europe and gave it to the World Bank, which is famous for giving money to corrupt generals and dictators? The Fed and its parallel institutions have increased their power and reach and influence and is one of the major architects of a new world government that will inevitably follow this new world economy into being.
David Gladstone (19:02:57) :
The Fed and its parallel institutions have increased their power and reach and influence and is one of the major architects of a new world government that will inevitably follow this new world economy into being.
I will not comment on the existence of vast left or right (take your pick) wing conspiracies to enslave us all.
I will say that I think that the English philosopher Edmund Burke got it right when he said, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.’
So do something.
–Mike Ramsey
And conspiracies get real old real quick….when compared to the real problems vexing us.
Might as well try to solve the obvious problems at hand.
Agree with Mike..and with Sir Edmund Burke.
“So do something.”
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Mike Ramsey (19:50:58)
I will say that I think that the English philosopher Edmund Burke got it right when he said, ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.’
So do something.
Yes but what?
In a time of universal deceit,
telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
George Orwell
Therefore I think David Gladstone is doing about all anyone can. I need a web adress of where this stuff is being discussed, this blog IMO has a different role.
savethesharks (07:38:26) wrote:
========
Roger Knights wrote: “But that’s not what you implied in your original statement, where the two policies were presented as mutually exclusive:
“THE REAL PROBLEM vexing the oceans today is the STRIP-MINING of important biology that help balance the ocean’s health. THAT is where the focus to correct should be aimed…NOT at some unproven “iron fertilization” means to coax more phytoplankton growth.””
==========
No where in that statement is any mutual exclusion going on.
The first boldfaced phrase above excludes (with its “NOT”) doing iron fertilization in addition to preventing overfishing, so it does present the two policies as mutually exclusive.
“You can read into it what you would like. I was merely saying that we are trying to fix one problem with another.”
I never implied that we should fix one problem with the other–you read that into what I wrote. I spoke of iron fertilization as being successful only insofar as it would provide more food for the whales. That’s all I said and meant. I didn’t mean that fertilization was the be-all and end-all solution for all the whales’ problems, or even that it wouldn’t necessarily cause other problems. My intent was only to poke mild fun at the greenies because something they disliked on principle–an adaptation tactic–wound up instead benefiting one of their iconic animals. Further, I added, in a subsequent comment, “We don’t have to choose one or the other. There’s no reason we can’t do both.”
crosspatch (11:18:02) : “‘We need to protect these cold arteries of life the same as we need to protect and nurture the great living reefs and the continental rain forests . . . these need to be our priorities as stewards of this blue-green biosphere. ‘ And I believe that is the sort of pompous narcissism that causes more harm than good.
realitycheck (15:18:46) : “Re: crosspatch (22:29:32) and capitalism.
While it may be viewed by some as harsh, I tend to agree with you. Profitable businesses and healthy economies, just like electricity generation, light in our homes, heating, air conditioning and medicines are critical for human advancement. With everything going on in the economy currently, it is easy to fall into the trap of believing capitalism=evil (just like electric power=evil, coal trains=evil, co2=evil etc.).
I enjoy reading crosspatch’s posts on WUWT and elsewhere and mostly agree with him(?). Realitycheck gets the tone — harsh. American Conservatives have difficulty getting in touch with “tough love”, rather than revelling in “harsh”. They honor the producers of the world (capitalists and entrepreneurs), but forget about the equally essential efforts of the workers in production — and the everyday details of their lives. This blind side has permitted global corporations, including, preeminently, financial ones, to opt for the cheapest labor, illegal immigrants, poor health care delivery to many, environmental destructiveness, and little public support for excellent schools and excellence from students.
This blind side has enabled the worst of global actors, primary among them are the ones yelling anthropogenic global warming, evil-CO2, cap-and-trade, etc. Many Americans, along with others in the world, have turned to the wolves in sheeps’ clothing who argue “love”, “save-the-earth”, “protect-us-from-harsh [capitalistic] ogres”. And they have permitted the fraud and corruption, with global tentacles, that is grasping at the American way of life because they have not perceived that they are “cherished” by Conservatives. They have needed the consistent “tough love” that Crosscheck says he means when he is confronted with his own harshness. IMO, the classical liberal has more to offer along these lines. Nevertheless, we must work together as hard as we have ever worked in our lives to prevent that 2009 UN conference from being successful. Much gratitude to Anthony and crew for unstinting efforts.
If the desert condition is necessary in order for the green condition to exist (and we don’t know that but we should at least be asking the question), we should allow the oceans to run naturally dry of its ecosystems. As in, if plankton has become depleted, allowing grazers to reduce in number to a subsistence level, we should leave it alone and let it happen. This relatively predatory free, CO2 rich, dusty land condition may be necessary for the plankton bloom to get started, and the cyclic ocean greening to start back up again.
The “CO2 pollution”, “iron deficiency status”, and “overfishing” discussion needs to occur in concert with desert or green oceanic conditions. It is my hunch, and it seems to be coaberated by fish counts as a condition of oceanic oscillation, that decreased marine life is more a natural condition of season. Me thinks we blame ourselves too much. So for marine food source discussion, the only relevant topic should be fishing regulations under desert conditions, and regulations under green conditions .
The only pollution discussion I see that is relevant to both desert and green oceanic conditions would be liquid effluent emission. We should not be using the ocean as our mixed substance toilet, as in the case near Ensenada, Mexico, where untreated mixed substance sewer effluent is piped right out to the mid-tide beach area. Were it JUST made up of untreated, paperless human excrement and urine, that would be one thing (all marine life uses the ocean as their toilet). But our effluent has things in it that are man-made and highly toxic. We mix this gray water effluent, whether from households or industry, with human body waste at our planet’s peril.
Pamela Gray (09:08:08) :
We should not be using the ocean as our mixed substance toilet, as in the case near Ensenada, Mexico, where untreated mixed substance sewer effluent is piped right out to the mid-tide beach area.
I would add the dead zone extending out from the mouth of the Mississippi river into the gulf of Mexico.
http://www.tulane.edu/~bfleury/envirobio/enviroweb/DeadZone.htm
–Mike Ramsey
Correction; In an earlier post I see the juxtaposition of the rapid decline of sharks next to Professor Jackson’s quote was probably a little too much.
I was not saying that the such rapid decline in an of itself would produce the following, was just saying it is part of the cascade to the apocalyptic scenario he paints for the oceans, when one includes habitat, apex-species, and food-staple species destruction, pollution and fertilizer run-off and dead-zones, ocean acidification and other factors, some of them man-made or at least man-exacerbated.
“Taken together, these problems [in the ocean] risk “transforming once complex ecosystems like coral reefs and kelp forests into monotonous level bottoms, transforming clear and productive coastal seas into anoxic dead zones, and transforming complex food webs topped by big animals into simplified, microbially dominated ecosystems with boom and bust cycles of toxic dinoflagellate blooms, jellyfish, and disease.”
Have some of the jellyfish blooms worldwide attributed to the oceanic oscillations? To a degree, no doubt.
But are jellyfish blooms also indicators that these undesirable, opportunistic, simple, and fast-reproducing predators have rushed in to fill a vacuum because so much of the valuable marine life has been strip-mined from the oceans? This is a sizable, if not majority part of the equation.
Now we can’t control the ocean’s temperatures or their salinity or their cycles. Rather, they control us and our weather and shape everything we do on land.
But we CAN control habitat and species destruction. That is one thing we can tackle, in an effort to not end up with the cartoon on the right at the head of this thread article.
Interesting reading:
http://seaaroundus.org/magazines/2007/TheRiseOfSlime.pdf
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Mike Ramsey (09:17:04) :
Pamela Gray (09:08:08) :
“We should not be using the ocean as our mixed substance toilet, as in the case near Ensenada, Mexico, where untreated mixed substance sewer effluent is piped right out to the mid-tide beach area.”
“I would add the dead zone extending out from the mouth of the Mississippi river into the gulf of Mexico.”
And the very large dead zone in the Chesapeake Bay…..
Eventually, nano-technology is going to make diamonds the size of boxcars out of airborne CO2 using sunlight. We will then drop these diamonds to the ocean floor off of barges. Then we will all congratulate ourselves as the new ice age begins.
The problems vexxing the oceans are as complex as the food-web that laces them.
Here’s a good read: The Most Important Fish in the Sea. The Rutgers prof and avid fisherman who is its author, chronicles in detail the lowly menhaden, the east coast staple fish that many other fish depend on. We use ’em for bait…and they stink to high heaven. They are oily and bony, so not good eatin’…but other fish love em. One author describes the menhaden as “born to be eaten.”
Well the menhaden, once overfished before to the point of near extinction, until states began outlawing their catch, are in decline again.
Now, my lovely home state of Virginia, the last state to not make menhaden fishing illegal in its waters, hosts the second highest-grossing fishing port in the nation, the tiny Chesapeake Bay town of Reedville (population 2000). That town is made possible by a Texas-based company named Omega Protein (started as the Zapata Corporation years ago by the bush family).
Omega Protein has a monopoly on the national menhaden catch, and through their vast reduction fishing fleet and plants at Reedville, annually grinds up 250 million pounds of menhaden to become your catfood, omega 3 vitamins, fertilizer, and so on.
http://www.bayjournal.com/article.cfm?article=1901
Other predatory species such as the striped bass, who depend upon menhaden as their food, begin to turn toward other food sources and deplete them as the the overfishing begins to cascade throughout the food web. In some cases, the striped bass starve, and develop bacterial lesions from lowered resistance….
http://www.chesbay.org/articles/striped%20bass%20study(1-09).asp
Ironically the fertilizer produced from the ground-up menhaden, finds its way back into the Chesapeake Bay Watershed through fertilized lawns, golf courses, and corn farms.
Such helps produce the hypoxic and anoxic dead zones that now reside in the Chesapeake Bay water column.
Last summer brown and red tides were common, and I remember watching on the news camera shots of the normally benthic Blue Crabs becoming semi-pelagic, as they were swimming to the surface trying to get oxygen (but the water had become anoxic) so they died.
Last year, shortly thereafter, the Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab industry (after lasting for 100s of years) was declared a disaster.
Keep in mind that, the Chesapeake, as one of the largest estuaries in the world, used to yield the highest per capita volume of fish in the world. Not anymore.
In the days of Capt. John Smith, one could see to the bottom, and there were oyster shoals that were so big, they formed little islands.
Now menhaden and oysters have one thing in common: they are both filter feeders. They filter out impurities from the water column that no other fish want to eat.
Ahh…the oysters. Used to be the Lynnhaven Oysters were as big as a plate and considered the best in the world.
Not anymore. Every time a new crop is set out, they are gobbled up by swarms of voracious cownose rays.
The reasons the cownose rays are proliferating out of control?
There are no sharks to eat them.
Similarly, the 100+ year bay scallops fishery in North Carolina which at one time was very productive….was finally wiped out by those little devils (the cownose rays), who now that there are no sharks, are reproducing out of control.
http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/mar07/petersonshark032807.html
The recent Chinese catapulting of one billion people into the middle class….has given rise to the increased demand for the useless concoction of shark-fin soup which is helping deplete the world’s shark populations…
(Remember…sharks, having evolved over 450 million years in the oceans, with no natural predators up until homo sapiens, reproduce very slowly).
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2616156&page=1
Now the 97% decrease in tiger and scalloped hammerhead sharks in the northwest Atlantic
99% decrease of the smooth hammerhead, bull, and duskys in the same…those percentages are quite alarming.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/29/AR2007032901963.html
But its not just happening in my corner of the ocean:
Sharks pronounced “functionally extinct” in the Mediterranean.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3344301/Sharks-functionally-extinct-in-Mediterranean.htm
Points to ponder:
1) In the event the availability of valuable marine life cycles with the natural oscillations of the oceans, as ocean flora and fauna has evolved over hundreds of millions of years, the introduction of anthropogenic forcing over the last few hundred, hardly qualifies homo sapiens as being part of that natural oscillation.
Here is a good presentation that looks into the ebb and flow of bluefin tuna, including the natural oscillations, such as the Atlantic Multidecadal, and finds that the real problem is just plain overfishing.
http://www.iccat.int/Documents/Meetings/Docs/BFT_SYMP/pdf/BFT_SYMP_018.pdf