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Essay by Eric Worrall
Having failed to gain traction with solar geoengineering schemes, greens are dusting off ocean geoengineering ideas. But like all green ideas, ocean geoengineering has a deadly downside.
Can we beat climate change by geoengineering the oceans?
Chemically altering the seas through iron fertilisation or alkalinity enhancement could be our best hope to suck vast amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere – but questions remain on whether it is worth the risk
ENVIRONMENT 29 June 2022
By Adam VaughanA SPRINKLING of iron ore “glued” onto rice husks using goo from plants hardly sounds like a recipe for saving the planet. Not to mention the fact that the mixture is designed to mimic whale faeces.
And yet if a team of researchers backed by a former chief scientific adviser to the UK government crack this, it could be coming to an ocean near you soon. Theirs is just one of several projects across the world, small in scale but big in vision, looking at a new way to stave off the worst effects of climate change: engineering the oceans.
Similar “geoengineering” proposals are highly controversial, and this idea is no different, horrifying those who warn of the potential unintended consequences of fiddling with sensitive marine environments. But the world’s lack of progress on curbing carbon emissions might make it necessary. A recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on how to tackle climate change made clear that deploying techniques to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will be “unavoidable” if humanity is to achieve net zero carbon emissions around the middle of the century. On land, there are plenty of schemes to do that, from planting trees to machines in Iceland that chemically capture CO2 so it can be buried deep underground. But getting any of them to the scale we need in time to really make a difference is a tough ask. It could be that we need the oceans, too.
…
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25533930-600-can-we-beat-climate-change-by-geoengineering-the-oceans/
Sounds reasonable right? Nothing like solar geoengineering insanity, reflecting sunlight away from plants?
Not so fast.
2016/04/17
Taiwan Research Group Challenges Global Warming Solution
Translated and compiled by Shin-wei Chang and Olivia Yang
“Iron fertilization” is widely recognized as a possible applicable solution to global warming. However, a research team led by Haojia Abby Ren, associate professor of Geosciences at National Taiwan University (NTU), has proved that “iron fertilization” is not beneficial to algae.
To alleviate the impact of global warming, scientists have proposed a hypothesis of “iron fertilization,” assuming that adding iron into the ocean can boost the growth of algae to absorb the carbon dioxide in the air.
However, researchers in Taiwan have found flaws in this hypothesis.
…
The growth of algae requires nutrients other than iron, such as nitrate and phosphate. With the growing amount of algae, consumption of these nutrients also increases in the area. But when currents carry the algae to other waters, the nutrients become relatively scare elements, making algae hard to grow.
This results in iron fertilization not being able to increase the growth of algae worldwide; on the contrary, it would suppress the growth of algae in the equatorial zone. In addition, there is a limited reduction of carbon dioxide, and there would be a lack of oxygen in the ocean.
…
Read more: https://international.thenewslens.com/article/27646
The 2016 study which dismisses the alleged benefits of iron fertilisation is available here.
If the Taiwanese scientists are right, the worst case outcome of a major ocean iron fertilisation effort could be the creation of a large equatorial ocean dead zone, and no net absorption of CO2.
A large equatorial dead zone is probably not as devastating as what the solar geoengineering fans want to do to us, which could cause global famine, but who knows. Either way lets hope none of these high risk global climate tinkerers ever receive the funding they are looking for.
As if they understand how climate works well enough to do engineering?
hell, they don’t even understand the word “limiting”
The world’s oceans cover 70+% of the earth’s surface, at an average depth of over 2 miles. Just what kind of an airhead do you have to be to think you can change anything about the ocean, and actually talk publicly about your singular air-headedness?
Perhaps U.S. dollars could be dropped from the sky to block some sunlight.
It is essier to print dollars these days than getting fertiliziers for farming, let alone fertilizing the oceans.
But hey, who knows, donkeys some day may fly.
cheers
There’s quite a few Green donkeys flying whilst telling the rest of us to stop flying to save the planet
Iron is the limiting factor in Phytoplankton production. See the link I posted. Real world results contradict these “studies”.
I agree, and have been hearing about it for over 2 decades – it has been negated or cancelled by the climate hive since almost the beginning because it does nothing to kill industry.
Really it is win-win-win – give the enviromentalists something to champion that won’t hurt the world, increase food supply to make up for the ever increasing amount of fish being harvested, give our wallets a break from green energy Rube Goldberg machines that run on taxes not really wind or sunshine.
The swindlers who run this planet profit from the illusion of scarcity. They don’t want abundance. They want us on our knees begging for favors.
“Environmentalists” have been indoctrinated in Malthusian delusion. They are playing the role of useful fools for the elite. Human innovation has created more abundance of everything. That’s why transnational corporations want Government control of markets. They want protection from the better mouse trap they don’t own.
The same airheads that think Man’s CO2 has caused CAGW.
(Or whatever they call it now. As the past predictions have failed to come to pass they keep changing the name. To be more “inclusive”, I guess.)
We had to destroy the Earth to save the Earth
The idiocracy is not sure
Perhaps they ought read Greylorn
by Keith Laumer?
The oceans are phosphate poor. This limits plant growth. Yet many laundry detergents advertise phosphate free to avoid enhanced plant growth.
Maybe we simply need to get back to phosphates in our laundry detergent. Everything eventually empties into the oceans.
Maybe we simply need to get back to phosphates in our laundry detergent.
___________________________________________________________
Stop suggesting alternate methods for climate science to reduce CO2. In other words, stop buying into the bullshit.
The only alternative that is acceptable to rational people is to do nothing, neither carbon dioxide nor methane constitute a problem. Since 1850 the world has warmed up, cooled down, warmed up, cooled down and warmed up. It is difficult to assign any specific cause of that or conclude that it is a problem.
The benefits of a warmer world and increased CO2 are well documented. The negative aspects claimed by climate science and the alarmist media have not materialized. Events and phenomena that they reported on have happened before or have been occurring right along. There is nothing new except a greener world.
Even the sun has eleven year cycles, some hotter and some cooler and therefore our climate on earth is affected by these cycles. Why is everyone so ignorant of science?
Education.
As in: Lack of.
Yes it’s really a dumb idea to reduce CO2, but perhaps phosphate and iron might be of use to boost productivity of relatively dead ocean areas if one were to ranch fish, such as salmon, blue fin tuna.
Fisheries enchacement would be the main benefit as Russ George found with the salmon experiment
Eco fascists’ who depend on things being bad for funding made sure nobody tried that again. Humans benefitting nature is not allowed.
Exactly. Russ George’s ocean fertilization experiment increased the populations of all seven species of salmon by 400%. You simply cannot argue with data like that! Anyone who tries is an ecoretard.
That’s totally true, but the masses won’t give up the need to ‘save the environment’ even though they don’t know a thing about science. Wind turbines, solar panels and batteries will have no real benefit to humanity or the planet – whereas ocean fertilization will help feed the world and increase biodiversity. And best of all it’s really cheap. Even small tests would pay for themselves, e.g. record salmon catches 2 years in a row, before it was shut down by authorities, after years of poor catches, test done by a BC First Nations band a few years ago.
How many millions of tons of iron blow off the Sahara desert into the Atlantic ocean each year? How much difference will simulated whale poop make. Sure it makes grant money grow. Algae, not so much.
That is why they knew that iron fertilization of the oceans works. Major dust storms do the work some years, but sometimes might be an order of magnitude less.
The dust actually makes it all the way to the Amazon – and that’s part of the reason it is what it is.
More iron dust – heck, huge matts of iron wool towed behind ships if the regulators won’t gert out of the way, will make a huge difference, as already tested in BC a few years ago – record salmon catches alone makes it worthwhile.
And hey, it can mine the lucrative carbon credits from the rubes dishing it out – undercut other carbon credit schemes and put turbines and panels out of business.
There is so many ways ocean fertilization makes sense and it’s cheap to do for a huge affect.
I’m surprised fisherman don’t do it on the sly – they dump tons of other stuff in the oceans.
Maybe they need to pump raw residential sewage into tankers and dump it in the middle of the ocean, creating a nutrient rich environment to promote growth away from human shipping lanes. They could also dump mega-tons of waste plastic to create mounting points for different types of ocean life.
I’m being almost a hundred percent sarcastic here, but I can’t help wondering if it might actually be beneficial.
Mostly however I imagine the heads that would explode if it were suggested seriously.
Peter Schell- Don’t be shy; apply for a grant and get on that “Green Money Gravy Train!” /sarc
Ever hear of jenkem?
Bet you get a real blast if you’re smoking !!!
But no one has yet proven that we need to do anything about the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Let alone that it is causing anything close to catastrophic.
Exactly. Nobody has proven that this whole thing is anything more than UHI. A bit warmer in the cities due to larger populations/more activity, urbanisation of temperature stations and they’ve got a crisis of their own manufacture. Lets have the temperature stations moved into uncontaminated areas then see what’s happening – I’ll bet it’s not remotely like what we’re being told!
exactly richard, measuring temperature the way we do now, devices in or near uhi, or sources of man made heat, is like wondering why in december the kitchen is warmer that the rest of your house as you bake christmas dinner all day long.
But at least, in those circumstances, most of us would be interested in noting the temperature in the rest of the house.
It’s all bogus averaging.
I know, lets just throw ice cubes into the troposphere to cool the hot spot that CO2 warming theory says must be there. Oops, I guess somebody already did that because there is no tropospheric hot spot.
Virgins into the volcano, blood sacrifices to renew the world; maybe our species hasn’t advanced as far as we thought.
Or, capture all of Man’s CO2 emissions. Compress it into dry ice (VERY cold stuff) then levitate it into the troposphere!
(Of course, the “levitation” part still needs a little work. Just like grid scale batteries still need a little work. But that hasn’t stopped them from pushing a Green Grid.)
Time to resurrect the ORIGINAL meaning of the Precautionary Principle; if you don’t understand all of the consequences of a substantial change DON’T DO IT!
One would think that the precautionary principle would apply to a “transition” to renewables.
Well, they don’t comprehend the consequences of unintended consequences. Every liberal has a solution to everything that is simple, elegant (in their own minds) and flat wrong.
The comprehension of consequences to your own actions is completely lacking in education today. Instead the examples of politicians, climate scientists and pseudo celebrities all point to weaselling out or lying their way out of the consequences. People need to be held to account then perhaps they’d think more before acting.
Bring back the guillotine!
“high risk global climate tinkerers”
Eye-watering irony in just about every post. Like dumping 2 trillion tonnes of radiation blocking gas into the atmosphere is less than mere “tinkering”. And the pig-ignorant incited to dustiing off their pitch forks. You are scum Worrel.
So you think this is a good idea, Loydo?
Simple yes or no will do.
“Simple yes or no will do.”
That’s two too many choices, poor loydo will be more confused than normal.
Eric doesn’t make policy anywhere. He’s not the one crashing economies, Keeping poor people poor, all with no evidence. Alarmists are scum, because they’ve never been right, yet still want to destroy all the progress humanity has made. You are scum.
Why are these people so ONE TRACK MINDED ???? Deflecting carbon dioxide away from plants will reduce the growing ability of PLANTS and ALL OUR FOOD is derived from PLANTS. Even cows eat GRASS which needs CO2 to grow and thrive, elephants eat “GREENERY”. All animals eat something which relies on plants lower down the “chain” !!!! Why are you SO FIXATED on CARBON DIOXIDE as the criminal – we, humans EXHALE CO2 EVERY SECOND WE ARE ALIVE (that is a great deal of carbon dioxide !!) Perhaps WE should all STOP BREATHING? The magic is that we exhale CO2 which grows all our food; that is so symbiotic and CLEVER !! We are SO CONNECTED to what we eat to stay alive.
The idea that humans are in a symbiotic relationship with nature is poison to eco zealots who see us as cancer to the planet. We exhale CO2 for plants and plants exhale oxygen for us. The greening of the planet attributed to our emissions is also evidence of this.
Speaking of plants – during respiration, at light, they emit Co2. In fact, plants produce more than 10 TIMES that of human activities. That alone should show that if human Co2 production were to cease entirely, nothing would change.
But what the hell, we have trillions of dollars to waste on trying to control a trace gas that cannot possibly be connected to CAUSING climate change. It may very well be a CONSEQUENCE of climate change, but that is not proven either. But it has been shown that temperature rises first, then Co2 in multiple studies.
“Speaking of plants – during respiration, at light, they emit Co2.”
C3 plants do this. C4 plants convert their night CO2 to malic acid and use it when the sun comes up.
JF
95% of plants are C3, but what matter? Plants still produce 10X the Co2 of humans.
The carbon monster: plants, animals, people… and your little babies, too. The modern model has an extraterrestrial vibe: war of the worlds, aliens, V (remember the series).
These people scare me. They don’t know what they are doing. They are dealing with complex chaotic systems that are inherently unpredictable. And they are ignorant of just how ignorant they are.
Defund those teams of idiot “experts”!
Leave the ocean, the air, the land, alone, they are doing all right!
The article is a perfect example of how to stave off something that is not only happening but also is no threat to mankind, excuse me the Earth. English purists welcome to have a go at that.
Such an unlikely event – a well meaning, expensive and poorly considered geo-engineering solution to an imaginary eco-hobgoblin, that ultimately does way more harm than the supposed problem they are trying to solve. Where have we seen this before?
Is there a way we could recycle green zealots into fish food and thereby increase ocean productivity while decreasing all the eco-fearmongering?
And right now the problem of excess algae growth due to ag runoff is considered a growing crisis. Look up sea snot or ocean snot. It’s ruining marinas and beaches, causing massive problems. Rivers in ag regions choked with toxic algae. My local rivers too, meaning no summer swims and fishing is dicey.
“Scientists” live in narrowminded bubbles and cannot comprehend the idea they may be every bit as fallible and dumb as us common folk.
Science is not a product, it’s a process!
Comparing algae blooms from ag runoff to iron fertilization is a false equivalence.
“that chemically capture CO2 so it can be buried deep underground. But getting any of them to the scale we need in time to really make a difference is a tough ask.”
The only thing tougher than that is to make a renewables grid work. We’re all agreed now that it’s proven over and over to be impossible even with tens of trillions blown directly and indirectly with a generationsworth of global damage to economies. That crackpot geoengineering has reared its ugly head again is the big tell that climate boffins finally agree with the sceptics.
They also see the glitter of fear in in the eyes of Western leaders who have visions of famine, ill health and pitchfork-torches-anger in their populations. Blaming Russia for the disaster that is clearly a result of Western leaders’ policies and global governance adventures, isn’t going to work.
Western leaders are stupid, but thankfully they’re not brave. Their scramble to get fossil fuels is a clear sign that the whole show is over for good. They say its temporary, but, except for Joe Biden and Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, they’ve had niggling doubts over the past year at least.
So let me get this straight: these geniuses intend to counter what they claim to be air pollution by polluting the oceans?
SMH
I’ve been reading a book entitled “1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created”. Ostensibly it’s about the “Columbian Exchange”, a term adopted by historians a couple decades ago. The author – Charles C. Mann, not Michael – claims that what caused the “Little Ice Age” was the European diseases that wiped out large areas of grasslands in the eastern US and in small parts of Central and South America. The former indigenous peoples thus were no longer around to use fire to purposely keep the grasslands open from “invading” trees (who’d ever characterize oaks and elms and sycamores as evil invaders?). Thus the claimed massive increase in woodlands sequestered carbon, and thus cooled the earth.
To warmunists that is what is called an “A Ha!” moment.
Except that Mann claimed that the Little Ice Age began in 1550, which just happens to correspond to much of the depopulation of the eastern Americas. However, the Little Ice Age began at a minimum not in 1550 but in 1450, if not earlier. There were no Europeans in the Americas in 1450. And the amount of new woodlands, if any, was still tiny compared to those in the rest of the Earth.
Also Many’s theory also fails to account for climate, in that the eastern US is far more humid and thus favorable to heavy forest cover, as compared to the far drier grasslands of the Great Plains. The burning by Indians was in the grasslands of the Midwest, not the woodlands east of the Mississippi. The Indians burned the grasses to promote more dense feed for the Buffalo that were their food supply.
Also, the farmlands supposedly created by the Indians in the east were actually quite small in area, and much of their food production came from the woodlands, including nuts, berries, and woodland animals including deer. The major agricultural Indian societies in the east – the “Mississipian” culture – were hundreds of miles inland from first contact in the coastal areas, and had already reached its peak and began dying out in 1400, long before any Europeans and their diseases showed up in the Americas.
So anyway, the warmunists are now apparently blaming trees for the Little Ice age, and so are calling for more trees today … so they can cause another Little Ice Age.
Also, if carbon sequestration is an objective, open grasslands actually do a more effective job of that than forests. Grasses store carbon mostly as organic components in topsoils, so when they burn they release relatively little carbon to the air … while trees and shrubs store carbon in their woody material above ground, so when forests burn they release most of their stored carbon to the air. So theoretically, more grasslands and savannas = less atmospheric carbon = cooler atmosphere.
So much for the warmunists’ theory that European depopulation of the Americas via diseases and the resulting increase in trees caused the Little Ice Age!
These studies claiming harm don’t match reality. Iron fertilization dramatically increases biological productivity in the oceans. CO2 sequestration isn’t the reason to do it.
http://www.planetexperts.com/two-years-russ-george-illegally-dumped-iron-pacific-salmon-catches-400/
I just ran across this about scientists and engineers. From a Sigma Xi Blog (Research Honor Society suffering from ‘woke leadership’ ) member, claims to be a founding member of StableClimate.org which has the following.
“There is good money to be made in fighting global warming…..Collectively we realized that only “wicked problem” methodology could handle this type of problem. As it happened, three of us had experience in the use of wicked problem techniques: Route and Message Mapping, Lean Six Sigma, and Focus Group Analysis. We are scientists and engineers, a volunteer organization we dubbed the Stable Climate Group (SCG) working to find a way to stabilize the climate. SCG is working on integrating these three approaches and encourages your participation on the Forum as well as commenting on the Blog entries to help our developing strategies.”
Replying Sigma Xi member to Stable Climate founding member’s comment about sequestration– “….More information about when civilization will collapse is needed to answer your question. I hope it’s on a Monday…..”
Best definition of ‘woke’ is asleep, Sigma Xi ‘leaders’ are being in varying ways shaken out of their slumber. Ocean has way of taking care of “iron ore “glued” onto rice husks.”
Back in the day, Sigma Xi chartered a plane (DC9?) to take a group of us on a day trip to the Chalk River nuclear plant. What a fantastic day.
Was there something wrong with using Iron the fertilise the land based plants and critters?
It is in fact already done, although the purveyors go to lengths to say that Iron is not a fertiliser.
It just makes plants, grass especially, ‘healthier’
https://www.gfloutdoors.com/when-to-apply-iron-to-lawn-fertilization-guide/
Farmers around here use a foliar applied nutrient, here’s some made by the local merchant themselves:
https://www.agrigem.co.uk/shop-by-area/sports/fertiliser/nutriflo-trace-el-5l
It’s sprayed onto maize (even that headed for The Digester), potatoes and many arable crops, sometimes up to 6 or 7 applications per season.
I’m sure the same would apply in the ocean but for Iron to be available to plants on land, there needs to be sufficient Copper available.
Do the Geo-engineers mention that – or is Copper too valuable for saving the planet when used inside windmills, inter-connectors and electric cars?
Human critters need Copper for their Iron metabolism to work properly.
Classically in the UK at least, it would come from the household plumbing system – at least in areas with soft (acidic) water.
But many houses now are fitted with all-plastic plumbing.
Here’s a wonderation….
Should a pregnant human critter run low on Iron, actually low or low on Copper and the deficiency in either/both is combined with a deficiency of B Vitamins, an Autistic child is a guaranteed outcome.
Made even worse should she have been eating food laced with Glyphosate.
Going back to the household plumbing and the requirement for acidic water to mobilise Copper – how would the geo-engineers do that in the ocean? Wouldn’t the intrinsic alkalinity lock up the Copper and thus, the Iron?
Wouldn’t they just be wasting their time, even before we ask ‘Where’s all the Copper coming from?
Somehow I don’t think these muppets have thought this one through very well.
See also in the Nutriflo: Zinc
Wasn’t a deficiency of Zinc recognised as a problem during the C19 plandemic?
And long recognised as why folks’ senses of taste and smell can disappear. Not that that matters when you’ve only got rice or maize to eat.
It’s a real pig isn’t it, that bastid awful Soil Erosion.
Destroys your kids, wastes your food, roasts you alive in a desert then wipes out your entire civilisation soon after……
it is fixable
Sort it first then wait see how Climate responds…… both the real actual climate (weather and things) climate but also the crazy sort of climate that exists only inside people’s heads. and their computers
“Can we beat climate change by geoengineering the oceans?“
No, but we can summon the courage to do nothing to “beat” an imagined problem.
We can keep exposing the bogus claims of harm from carbon dioxide. We can keep pointing out how the atmosphere performs far more powerfully as the working fluid of its own self-initiating and self-limiting heat-engine operation than as a static radiative absorbing and emitting layer between the surface and space. We can keep posting facts that obviously bust the ridiculous past predictions of doom.
How about tying millstones around the necks of climate change true believers and tossing them into the Marianas Trench. Either that or throwing them into live volcanoes to appease the gods.
Both of these are just as scientifically sound as the solutions noted in this article, and have the added benefit of reducing the noise pollution from climate change cultists.
There is a limit to the damage a truly stupid person can cause, so to really FUBAR things you need one of these Woke masterminds. These self-appointed geniuses have no idea what hell they might unleash in their quixotic quest against CO2 (plant food they have branded a pollutant).
“Large equatorial dead zone.” That will cause widespread famine, at least among the peoples that depend on the ocean for much of their food – and most of their protein.
One way, I suppose, to take care of those Pacific island nations whining about sea level rise…
I’m sure they tried this idea 15 (?) years ago.
Didn’t work.
The oceans are pretty big.
Throw fertilizer around randomly on the ground and it’ll do bad stuff in some places, too.
Ocean iron fertilization works where it works and doesn’t where it doesn’t.
It has already been proven safe and effective at commercial scale: https://russgeorge.net/2021/10/02/ocean-pasture-collapse-caused-global-dimming-is-the-biggest-driver-of-climate-change/
The downside is that it’s all for nothing, they don’t know what they’re talking about, they don’t know what they’re doing, and the whole project is just to service their bloody self-righteous hubris.
And that’s all in addition to the people they’ll likely kill and the ecologies they’ll likely wreck.
I’m OK with this, as long as they restrict their “solutions” to their computer models. Keep them away from the real world.
We are already inadvertently geoengineering the marine/atmosphere interface,
See http://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/are-we-smoothing-the-path-to-global-warming/
JF
Maybe an explanation for the reduced cloud cover observed in modern times?
Too right – fewer salt CCNs from wave breaking.
JF
The climate establishment will make sure this is ignored. The CO2 boogeyman is all they allow.
Algae blooms tend to cause massive fish kills, and these dummies want to create algae blooms? This is why phosphates were banned in laundry detergents.
Algae blooms from fertilizer runoff are a different problem than iron fertilization which increases phytoplankton production.
Green lunacy obviously does not have a built-in rev limiter.
“The growth of algae requires nutrients other than iron, such as nitrate and phosphate.”
Considering all the extra nitrates and phosphates in run-off from cities and farming, that Taiwan study is a load of whale feces.
The iron fertilization has the advantage of being able to be turned off or increased according to need.
I doubt it will have any affect on the environment from CO2 capture, but it will be an almost immediate benefit to the ocean biosphere, from the very bottom of the food chain, to all the way up to us.
Greenie Schemes to tackle ‘Climate-Change’ and reduce CO2 always lead to massive ecological devastation and no improvements in anything at all.
The situation today is so bad that we are forced to risk geoengineering because it is a situation where people are forced to jump out of the window of the burning house.
In any case, the Paris agreement was the last attempt to reduce CO2, which ultimately failed. In addition, geoengineering gives fossil industries time to ensure that the transition will not be catastrophic.
CO2 doesn’t matter
Bio-engineering to reduce the global population of termites would be the easiest and most effective solution to reduce CO2, but the world will benefit from more CO2 so all of these solutions are nonsense.