http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2013/05/opinion-ocean-geoengineering
Dreams we cannot afford By Russ George The Daily Climate VANCOUVER, British Columbia – The billions of dollars required by geoengineers to scrub the atmosphere of carbon will bankrupt us. I have a cheaper solution. I met David Keith, often described as the father of geoengineering, a few years back in the backstage "green room" in New York City as we were preparing to go on stage for a TED event. TED talks charge high ticket prices for lavishly produced events on worldly topics that the intelligentsia and cognoscenti of technology and science like to attend. David, Martin Hoffert and I were speaking that night on a common theme: What to do about anthropogenic carbon dioxide.Geoengineers are presenting ideas that require hundreds of billions, even trillions, of dollars to solve the crisis of human-driven climate change.Marty, retired now from New York University, is a voluble advocate for getting off fossil fuels to avoid climate change impacts. David is a physics professor at Harvard University and is backed by Bill Gates. He's proud to be the father of the term "geoengineering," where we alter the climate to suit our needs instead of Nature's. Me? I am displeased to have the term hung around my neck. But I am an old hippy tree-planter who has spent life living outside of the box, with some bit of help from folks inside said box. I compromise and call myself an "ecoengineer."What transpired in the "green room" started out as a friendly exchange of views that became a heated discussion and rapidly devolved into an argument with sparks flying. My premise: The cost of dealing with anthropogenic CO2 must be and can be a tiny fraction of the cost demanded by those working in the field inside the box. David and other geoengineers are presenting ideas and inventions to the world that require hundreds of billions, even trillions, of dollars to solve the crisis of human-driven climate change. David's "artificial trees" – named after plants' abilities to pull carbon dioxide from the air – consist of vast arrays of fans blowing our carbon-rich air over a pool of sodium hydroxide. Other plans would have us send a fleet of planes or blimps aloft to seed the clouds with light-reflecting particles, much as a large volcanic explosion do. More farfetched are plans to lob trillions of mirrors into orbit to deflect the sun's energy.My work over the past two decades shows that we can solve a large part of the crisis for a small fraction of the cost. And because it's ecoengineering, we're restoring ecosystems at the same time we're solving climate change.Last summer, in the largest geoengineering project to date, I oversaw an ocean experiment that sowed 120 tons of iron sulphate and iron ore rock dust into the Pacific Ocean more than 200 miles west of British Columbia's Haida Gwaii islands. The premise was simple: Iron, acting as a fertilizer, would trigger a phytoplankton bloom that would pull carbon from the ocean. We'd simply be replenishing the sea with a natural mineral micronutrient. The whole ocean food chain would benefit, as well as the Haida, who have suffered from diminished salmon runs. Our carbon emissions are an immediate, cataclysmic problem for the oceans that make up more than 70 percent of our blue planet. We are delivering a lethal overdose of carbon dioxide to the ocean environment.This is the crisis of CO2, and we might as well forget about any long term problems associated with global warming – and the trillions of dollars needed by geoengineers like David Keith – if we do not first deal with ocean health.Some in the international community and in Canada claim that our project was unlawful are presently before the Supreme Court of British Columbia. A thorough review of law in Canada has yet to discover anything identifying the work as being unlawful. Other scientists have said this approach won't work – that other studies have found little ability for iron fertilization efforts to permanently sequester carbon on any scale relevant to counter human emissionsWe have found otherwise. Six years of preparation and months of sea studies aboard our research ships – along with two state of the art Slocum Ocean gliders and hourly data from buoys at the site – have produced nearly 200 million discrete measurements of the ocean environment and the bloom. The experiment is working.For mere pennies per ton of captured carbon dioxide, the native village I've been working with has replenished and restored its traditional ocean pasture. In doing so we captured tens of millions of ton of CO2 last year. The carbon has been converted into an even more valuable form: Life itself – plankton – that my friends on British Columbia's Haida Gwaii islands know best as fish food. Here's a link to a narrative on how well it worked. So five years have passed since that New York City TED evening, and David Keith's prototype artificial trees are being readied for a test. If the test works perhaps the world will pour more money into a larger test. If that works, he needs a price on carbon dioxide – $200 per ton – to scale up his effort to chemically engineer a solution out of the air.Saving the world one village at a time is practical and immediately possible. At a fraction of the cost of David's artificial trees, our native grown ecoengineering project is in fully operational condition, turning CO2 from its deadly form into life.And let's look at the economics: A $200 price tag on carbon emissions would have considerable ripple effects on the world economy. Take a flight from New York to Paris as one example. Each passenger disembarks with a two- to three-ton carbon footprint.Factoring in how fees and surcharges tend to multiply as they get passed to consumers, that sends the airfare soaring from about $1,150 today to about $2,350 with Keith's carbon offset price.Our village-based ocean plan, in contrast, adds less than $30 to the ticket price for the same amount of carbon sequestration. And you get delicious wild salmon with your inflight meal.We may still need David's artificial trees. I'm pretty sure we cannot afford them. Russ George (Twitter: @russgeorge2) is founder of the Vancouver based firm Haida Salmon Restoration Corp. which seeks to use ecoengineering projects to restore ecosystems, help salmon runs and slow climate change. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. 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