I greatly appreciate the scope of the concept and the aim of finding a key lever in addressing a multitude of issues.
The issues of long term cost and deployment control/monitoring (i.e. responsibility)needs to be addressed. In that, open water manipulation of the microbial loop can offer up a multitude of surprises and the microbial loop is, without exception, the most powerful/far reaching biotic process on this planet. The issue of cost should not be devalued. An example of a costly event would be storm disruption of the floating fertilizer application/distribution. Winds will cause the flakes to collect in some areas yet be absent in other close by territory. Surface waters are highly effected by winds (the most dramatic example being the wind driven 'skin effect' of the ENSO). In short, the cost of 'maintaining' a coarse of treatment in any one target territory would be substantial and perpetual. Also, this type of somewhat random/uncontrollable distribution/collection may well cause over fertilization in some areas, which can lead to dead zones, while the majority of the target territory is void of 'treatment'. Further, the trans-boundary conflict potential is high as, once released, there is no controlling means/method to prevent high concentrations of fertilizer from building up in waters controlled by adverse actors. In brief, it is important that these types of ideas are explored and exposed to the broadest possible 'constructive' critique. One related patent you may wish to review is here <http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0&docid=08535107&IDKey=D7E15CDB611C%0D%0A&HomeUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fpatft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect1%3DPTO2%2526p%3D1%2526u%3D%25252Fnetahtml%25252Fsearch-bool.html%2526r%3D2%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526d%3Dpall%2526s1%3D441%25252F1.CCLS.%2526OS%3DCCL%2F441%2F1%2526RS%3DCCL%2F441%2F1>. The cost factor is somewhat addressed in the patent yet the cost of fuel/feed/labor makes the business model excessively weak. As an important environmental side note to the fish feed issue within the patent; 50% of all wild caught fish are reduced to fish feed which is simply unsustainable. And, we are now down to less than 20% of the (1950) original wild stocks. Ignoring that one fact/issue significantly weakens any mariculture profit reliant option. Growing/cultivating fish feed is the only solution for any mariculture based GE option. Your floating fertilizer flakes corralled within large area floating pens (as depicted in the above patent), along with a more sound business model than described in the above patent, would begin to bring substance to this type of wide area fertilizer/albedo operation. And, as your are collecting multiple options along this line of thought, I would like to draw your attention to a paper published in 1942. REDUCTION OF CARBON DIOXIDE COUPLED WITH THE OXYHYDROGEN REACTION IN ALGAE <http://jgp.rupress.org/content/26/2/241.full.pdf+html>. Yes, micro algae can be cultivated without light...of any type. I hope this is helpful. Best regards, Michael Hayes On Monday, September 1, 2014 10:04:21 PM UTC-7, [email protected] wrote: > > Sam Carana has made a good summary of two of my recent concepts that are > designed to address both climate change and ocean acidification at > http://geo-engineering.blogspot.de/2014/08/seven-ocean-fertilization-strategies.html > > Would members consider how the concepts and their supporting technologies > might be: constructively criticised, improved, their effects modelled, be > lab tested, and approved for mesocosm piloting. Full documentation is > available on request from [email protected] <javascript:> They are made > freely available under Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0) Attribution licensing. > > -- 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]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
