To my opinion even the growing industry of fish farming and further
similar actions to breed sea food do much harm to ocean ecosystems. May
be much more than this iron fertilizing action - if it becomes
controlled and monitored by independant experts.
Franz
------ Originalnachricht ------
Von: "Russell Seitz / Bright Water" <[email protected]>
An: "geoengineering" <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]
Gesendet: 10.06.2017 01:06:40
Betreff: Re: [geo] Re: Iron-dumping ocean experiment sparks controversy
The cosmos seems to have a hands on policy with regard to the
"pristine" ocean.
The annual micrometeorite dust flux exceeds 20,000 tonnes, and
macroscopic meteorites average roughly 12 % metallic irom containing
4-12% nickel , some 73% of which lands in Earth's oceans.
As this flux accordingly exceeds that from marine corrosion of
man-made iron ships and structures by several orders of magnitude ,
and the biogeochemical cycle of iron dwarfs both of these sources, It
is hard to understand why opponents of the proposed iron
experiments presume to advertise them as existential threats.
On Friday, June 9, 2017 at 12:11:23 AM UTC-4, Greg Rau wrote:
For some perspective on why we haven't converted ocean deserts to C
sinks, see these early arguments from some very influential
oceanographic heavyweights
http://www.bio.miami.edu/prince/Chisholm.pdf
<http://www.bio.miami.edu/prince/Chisholm.pdf>
Ken and I offered an alternative to this "hands off the ocean" view
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/295/5553/275.4.full
<http://science.sciencemag.org/content/295/5553/275.4.full> but to
little effect.
Now that we've learned that land biology manipulations aren't going to
singelhandley save our bacon (or the ocean):
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1002/2016EF000469/asset/eft2203.pdf?v=1&t=j3pbjnzv&s=8ecb4ce810928afd86afbe71a43e4c644cb0149a
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1002/2016EF000469/asset/eft2203.pdf?v=1&t=j3pbjnzv&s=8ecb4ce810928afd86afbe71a43e4c644cb0149a>
is it time yet to revisit what the other 70% of the Earth's surface
and 99% of it's livable volume might have to offer? Or shall the false
concept of preserving a "still pristine" ocean remain the enemy of
research into potentially planet-saving actions?
Greg
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Brian Cady <[email protected]>
To: geoengineering <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, June 8, 2017 5:17 AM
Subject: [geo] Re: Iron-dumping ocean experiment sparks controversy
Perhaps it will help to emphasize the scale of the OIF opportunity. It
takes energy to fix air's carbon, and sunlight is a most sustainable
energy source. Much earth-incident sunlight is already used by life on
earth, but desert areas as well as High Nutrient - Low Chlorophyll
ocean (HNLC) areas both have low productivity. Deserts cover 10% of
earth’s dry land, while HNLC waters stretch across 1/5th of the
oceans, Dry land covers nearly 30% of earth, while water covers about
70%. 10% of 30% is 3%; 20% of 70% is 14%, 4.8-fold more, hence,
opportunities for engaging sunlight energy in carbon reduction in HNLC
waters may exceed those in deserts. Providing trace iron to HNLC areas
may be the least expensive carbon fix, and, as Russell Weitz points
out, we're already doing it unintentionally through ship rusting, as
well as through combustion of iron-containing fuel in ships, etc. that
cross HNLC areas.
On Friday, May 26, 2017 at 4:51:17 PM UTC-4, Russell Seitz / Bright
Water wrote:
Let me repeat the essence of what I wrote in response to Jeff in
Nature--
Marine corrosion results in every unprotected square meter of a
steel ship's immersed surface sheding an average of 8 g/m2 or more
of iron a year. The average laden vessel- a 30,000 tonne Handymax,
has an immersed surface of ~8,000 m2, and large containerships and
tankers run up to 2 hectares each. so each ship may be expected to
shed roughly six to twentty kg a year. As the world fleetin service
exceeds 10,000 such ships, iron fertilization in the sea lanes is
already in the range of 60 to 200 tonnes of iron.. not counting
smaller but more numerous craft, many correctly classified as
'rustbuckets, ' sunken vessells and iron wharfage and coastal
protection.
If as little as a few % of the immersed steel has been
imperfectly maintained ,the 10 tonne release criterion has been met
or exceeded -annually, for roughly the last 100 years-
On Thursday, May 25, 2017 at 3:11:24 AM UTC-4, Andrew Lockley wrote:
https://www.nature.com/news/ iron-dumping-ocean-experiment-
sparks-controversy-1.22031
<https://www.nature.com/news/iron-dumping-ocean-experiment-sparks-controversy-1.22031>
Iron-dumping ocean experiment sparks controversy
Canadian foundation says its field research could boost fisheries in
Chile, but researchers doubt its motives.
Jeff Tollefson
<https://www.nature.com/news/iron-dumping-ocean-experiment-sparks-controversy-1.22031#auth-1>
23 May 2017
Article toolsPDF
<http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/1.22031!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/545393a.pdf>Rights
& Permissions
<https://s100.copyright.com/AppDispatchServlet?author=Jeff+Tollefson&title=Iron-dumping+ocean+experiment+sparks+controversy&publisherName=NPG&contentID=10.1038%2F545393a&publicationDate=05%2F23%2F2017&publication=Nature+News>
Blickwinkel/Alamy
Phytoplankton need iron to make energy by photosynthesis.
Marine scientists are raising the alarm about a proposal to drop
tonnes of iron into the Pacific Ocean to stimulate the growth of
phytoplankton, the base of the food web. The non-profit group behind
the plan says that it wants to revive Chilean fisheries. It also has
ties to a controversial 2012 project in Canada that was accused of
violating an international moratorium on commercial ocean
fertilization.
The Oceaneos Marine Research Foundation of Vancouver, Canada, says
that it is seeking permits from the Chilean government to release up
to 10 tonnes of iron particles 130 kilometres off the coast of
Coquimbo as early as 2018. But Chilean scientists are worried
because the organization grew out of a for-profit company, Oceaneos
Environmental Solutions of Vancouver, that has sought to patent
iron-fertilization technologies. Some researchers suspect that the
foundation is ultimately seeking to profit from an unproven and
potentially harmful activity.
“They claim that by producing more phytoplankton, they could help
the recovery of the fisheries,” says Osvaldo Ulloa, director of the
Millennium Institute of Oceanography in Concepción, Chile. “We don’t
see any evidence to support that claim.”
Related storiesEmissions reduction: Scrutinize CO2 removal methods
<https://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/530153a>Climate
geoengineering schemes come under fire
<https://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/nature.2015.16887>Climate
tinkerers thrash out a plan
<https://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/516020a>
More related stories
<https://www.nature.com/news/iron-dumping-ocean-experiment-sparks-controversy-1.22031#related-links>
Tensions flared in April, when researchers at the institute went
public with their concerns in response to Chilean media reports on
the project. The government has since requested input from the
Chilean Academy of Science, and the institute is organizing a forum
on the project and related research on 25 May, at a marine-sciences
meeting in Valparaíso, Chile. The Oceaneos foundation, which
declined an invitation, has accused the scientists of improperly
classifying its work as geoengineering, rather than ocean
restoration. Oceaneos president Michael Riedijk says that his team
wants to work with Chilean scientists and will make all the data
from its experiment public. The foundation plans to hold its own
forum later, but if scientists aren’t willing to engage, he says,
“we’ll just move on without them”.
Researchers worldwide have conducted 13 major iron-fertilization
experiments in the open ocean since 1990. All have sought to test
whether stimulating phytoplankton growth
<http://www.nature.com/news/dumping-iron-at-sea-does-sink-carbon-1.11028>
can increase the amount of carbon dioxide that the organisms pull
out of the atmosphere and deposit in the deep ocean when they die.
Determining how much carbon is sequestered during such experiments
has proved difficult, however, and scientists have raised concerns
about potential adverse effects, such as toxic algal blooms. In
2008, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity put in
place a moratorium on all ocean-fertilization projects
<https://www.nature.com/news/2008/080603/full/453704b.html> apart
from small ones in coastal waters. Five years later, the London
Convention on ocean pollution adopted rules for evaluating such
studies.
Because Oceaneos’s planned experiment would take place in Chilean
waters, it is allowed under those rules. Riedijk says that the
foundation will voluntarily follow international protocols for such
studies; it is unclear whether that will allay fears that the group
is promoting an unproven technology, rather than conducting basic
research.
“If they want to partner with academics, then surely transparency
is their best foot forward.”
Philip Boyd, a marine ecologist at the University of Tasmania in
Hobart, Australia, wants to see the foundation publish research
based on lab experiments before heading out into the field. “If they
are a not-for-profit scientific venture that wants to partner with
academics, then surely transparency is their best foot forward,” he
says.
Oceaneos’s links to a 2012 iron-fertilization project off the coast
of British Columbia, Canada, have made some researchers wary. In
that project, US entrepreneur Russ George convinced a Haida Nation
village to pursue iron fertilization to boost salmon populations,
with the potential to sell carbon credits based on the amount of CO2
that would be sequestered in the ocean. News of the plan broke after
project organizers had dumped around 100 tonnes of iron sulfate into
the open ocean. In the years since, scientists have seen no evidence
that the experiment worked.
Riedijk says he was intrigued when he read about the Haida
experiment in 2013, and contacted one of its organizers, Jason
McNamee. McNamee later served as chief operating officer of Oceaneos
Environmental Solutions — which Riedijk co-founded — before leaving
the company last year.
Despite the Haida project’s problems, Riedijk says that ocean
fertilization merits further research: “If this actually does work,
it does have global implications.” Oceaneos Environ-mental Solutions
has developed an iron compound that can be consumed efficiently by
phytoplankton, he adds, but he declined to release details. Riedijk
also says that the foundation is working on a method to trace the
movement of iron up the food chain and into fish populations.
In the meantime, scientists say that it will be difficult to get
solid data from the Oceaneos foundation’s planned experiment. The
geology off the Chilean coast, and the patterns of currents there,
create a mosaic of low- and high-iron waters. Anchovies, horse
mackerel and other fish move freely between these areas.
And adding iron could shift the location and timing of phytoplankton
blooms to favour fast-growing species, says Adrian Marchetti, a
biological oceanographer at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. One of those, the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia, produces
domoic acid, a neurotoxin that can kill mammals and birds.
Oceaneos’s experiment will probably increase plankton growth in
low-iron waters, Marchetti says, “but it’s not to say that that is
actually good for the higher levels of the food chain”.
Nature 545, 393–394 (25 May 2017) doi :10.1038/545393a
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