I disagree with Pete Vincent's verdict on the Atlantic article. It
was not "rather" disinformative, but very disinformative. His
specific criticisms are right on. As to ocean farming, it would be
the worst possible development if it grew much further than the
relatively small coastal pockets that exist so far.. It would create
even more ecological damage than land farming.
As a chemist by trade who was also an active environmental campaigner
50 years ago (when we were considered to be either neurotic or
eccentric) I feel embarrassed these days by what so-called
environmentalists such as Al Gore get up to.
Keith
At 21:58 29/11/2011, you wrote:
This article is rather disinformative with its use of semi-science
terminology which is simplified to the point of being wrong
On Sun, 27 Nov 2011, Sally Lerner wrote:
> Sounds good all ways, but I'll be looking for the impact
assessments... Sally
> ________________________________________
> From: Portside Moderator [[email protected]]
> Sent: Friday, November 25, 2011 8:39 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: The Coming Green Wave: Ocean Farming
>
> The Coming Green Wave: Ocean Farming to Fight Climate Change
>
> by Brendan Smith
> November 23, 2011
>
http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/11/the-coming-green-wave-ocean-farming-to-fight-climate-change/248750/
>
> Seaweed farms have the capacity to grow huge
> amounts of nutrient-rich food, and oysters can act
> as an efficient carbon and nitrogen sink
[...]
> Oysters also absorb carbon, but their real talent is
> filtering nitrogen out of the water column. Nitrogen is
> the greenhouse gas you don't pay attention to -- it is
> nearly 300 times as potent[9] as carbon dioxide, and
> according to the journal Nature[11], the second worst in
> terms of having already exceeded a maximum "planetary
> boundary[12]."
Yipes. If this were true, life might never have started, or have
been roasted out, as on Venus, billions of years ago. After all,
nitrogen is 80% of the atmosphere. Let's see how this nonsense came
about. Reference 9:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Living-Green/2010/0113/Earth-s-growing-nitrogen-threat
Ah. in this article, we learn that the 300x CO2 factor belongs
to N2O, nitrous oxide, not nitrogen at all. Extraordinarily sloppy
writing, obviously a techno-illiterate. But there's more...
Like carbon, nitrogen is an essential
> part of life -- plants, animals, and bacteria all need
> it to survive -- but too much has a devastating effect
> on our land and ocean ecosystems.
>
> The main nitrogen polluter is agricultural fertilizer
> runoff. All told, the production of synthetic
> fertilizers and pesticides contributes more than one
> trillion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions to the
> atmosphere globally each year. That's the same amount of
> emissions that are generated by 88 million passenger
> cars each year.
>
> Much of this nitrogen from fertilizers ends up in our
> oceans, where nitrogen is now 50 percent above normal
> levels. According to the journal Science, excess
> nitrogen "depletes essential oxygen levels in the water
> and has significant effects on climate, food production,
> and ecosystems all over the world."
OK, first we have "greenhouse gas" implicitly conflated as
"nitrogen", which is patent nonsense. And then we have
immediately following, "nitrogen" levels 50% above normal
in sea water, and depleting oxygen. Again, with nitrogen
at 80% of the atmosphere, the surface layers of the sea
must be saturated with N2 already, so this makes no sense,
but this sounds like a dire change. Well, obviously, the
nitrogen-containing pollutants from fertilizer runoff are
nitrates and nitrites, not nitrogen at all. Conflating the
two is like raising alarms after confusing the chloride in
sea salt with chlorine gas. Pity the poor chemically naive
reader trying to get a handle on these issues after reading
this befuddlement. And it doesn't stop there.
> Oysters to the rescue. One oyster filters 30-50 gallons
> of water a day -- and in the process filters nitrogen
> out of the water column.
That would be a good trick, if it were possible, but of course
it isn't. The N2 levels in sea water are unaffected by mollusc
metabolism. Again, it is nitrates which are being mislabelled
here.
With this level of error in the fundamental science, I am
led to doubt pretty much everything else this guy has written
in this article, as I don't have time to go through and fact
check all the rest of his text.
-Pete
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/11/
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