Dear Oliver,
I'd rather hit an ice age than a cauldron. It's easy to keep warm, and coolth is not conducive to conflict; on the other hand there's no way we could survive 6 degrees warming, and long before we reach that temperature, there'd probably be a nuclear war, knocking out the ozone and leading to horrible deaths for everyone. Note that homo sapiens has evolved during Ice Age temperature swings - but has never experienced a global temperature much above today's. No. I think the dangers of not doing enough are infinitely greater than the dangers of doing too much. BTW, the Southern Ocean is near limit of CO2 absorption - so with a little more warming it will turn from a carbon sink into a carbon source. Thus, 2 degrees cooling from OIF could actually help to draw down more CO2 than the algal bloom. Furthermore 2 degrees cooling would help to protect the WAIS (West Antarctic Ice Sheet) and the lower levels of marine food chain that live on underside of sea ice. Yes please. This OIF idea is growing on me! However my favorite CO2 capture/sequester technique is still biochar, which is highly scaleable and safe as houses - or rather should I say, 'safer than houses'. See Peter Read's "Global Gardening with a Leaky Bucket": http://energy.massey.ac.nz/Documents/Peter%20Read/GGLBnqf25ix08.pdf But every little bit helps. We need all the weapons we can muster to win this war against global warming. Cheers, John ----- Original Message ----- From: "Oliver Wingenter" <[email protected]> To: "geoengineering" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 4:34 AM Subject: [geo] Massive iron fertilization will just never-work-terrorism might > > Dear Dan, > > I don't get the whole last thread. If we fertilize more than 2% of > the Southern ocean, we will over chill the area by more than 2 C. So > getting to 10, 15, 20, 50 per cent or more of the CO2 build up > sequestered is rather fantasy unless we are prepared for an ice age. > > We have actual field data to support the over cooling (http:// > infohost.nmt.edu/~oliver/wingenter_pub.html; not all of which is my > own) plus model results (biogeochemical POP to be submitted in Jan or > Feb 2009). What I am saying is the whole idea of massive OIF will > never work. Only less than 1% of the Southern ocean can be iron > fertilized. > > What we need to be doing is protecting against Climate Terrorism or > wanna be dogooders (or even carbon credit profiteers, dogooders for > profit). Imagine some rich prince in Dubai that has a skyscraper he > would like to protect and would probably like the sea level to stay > just where it is, one or two meters below Dubai. May be even receding > a bit. I bet his cousin probably has a few oil tankers docked idol at > this time. Oil is low, Somali pirate are not. Gee, iron sulfate is > pretty cheap now too. Next thing you know we have an ice age. The > Southern Ocean has had a critical impact on glacial periods and Sulfur > has been a big part of it. Too much iron in the wrong hands could > chill the region 10 C or more and change the entire dynamics, > atmosphere and ocean. Even 2% iron addition is too much. > > CO2 sequestration by OIF will never work but fertilizing of 1% or > less of the Southern Ocean could stabilize the Antarctic ice sheets. > > > Sincerely, > > Oliver Wingenter > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
