Fw: [geo] Iron-dumping ocean experiment sparks controversy

['Robert Tulip' via geoengineering]

----- Forwarded Message -----
 From: Andrew Lockley <andrew.lock...@gmail.com>
 To: Robert Tulip <rtulip2...@yahoo.com.au> 
 Sent: Wednesday, 7 June 2017, 18:00
 Subject: Re: [geo] Iron-dumping ocean experiment sparks controversy
   
Suggest you post this to the list 
On 7 Jun 2017 00:10, "Robert Tulip" <rtulip2...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:

Hi Andrew
I have been thinking about your email below, and looking at some of the sources.
I had thought Ocean Iron Fertilization (OIF) and biodiversity was a 
'no-brainer', but can see that this analysis is not shared by others.
Today Russ George posted a really good summary of why ocean restoration 
including OIF is key to planetary biodiversity at http://russgeorge.net/2017/ 
06/06/un-ocean-conference- denies-oceans-what-it-offers- lands/
I have been reading some of the scientific papers on OIF against the challenge 
you raise and look forward to further discussion on how we can best focus on 
ocean biodiversity.
Russ was physically banned at the gate from attending the UN Ocean Conference.  
To me this is a highly disturbing and puzzling occurrence, in view of his 
highly informed scientific approach, and indicates that the UN is unable to 
cope with legitimate debate.
Regards, Robert      From: Andrew Lockley <andrew.lock...@gmail.com>
 To: Robert Tulip <rtulip2...@yahoo.com.au> 
 Sent: Saturday, 27 May 2017, 16:46
 Subject: Re: [geo] Iron-dumping ocean experiment sparks controversy
  
I suggest you've yet to successfully make your case on biodiversity benefits of 
OIF 
On 27 May 2017 04:19, "Robert Tulip" <rtulip2...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:

Thanks Andrew, I understand your policy and am sorry if you considered any of 
my statements to be personal criticisms rather than responses to specific 
statements and policies. My comments were not intended as personal criticisms, 
but as factual statements about ideological views that are widespread among 
climate activists.  It is a scandal that OIF action that promotes biodiversity 
is prevented by activists who hypocritically claim to represent biodiversity.   
Robert

      From: Andrew Lockley <andrew.lock...@gmail.com>
 To: Robert Tulip <rtulip2...@yahoo.com.au> 
 Sent: Saturday, 27 May 2017, 3:04
 Subject: Re: [geo] Iron-dumping ocean experiment sparks controversy
  
Ad hominem attacks are not permissible 
A
On 26 May 2017 13:28, "Robert Tulip" <rtulip2...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:

This article from Nature contains an appalling lie about the 2012 Haida Salmon 
Experiment.  
The Nature article falsely states "scientists have seen no evidence that the 
experiment worked."  This alleged failure to see any evidence ignores extensive 
data and theory supporting the Haida Salmon results.
Here is one link to the scientific evidence that Nature claims does not exist.  
Ocean Fertilization: A Dangerous Experiment Gone Right | PlanetSave states the 
Haida Salmon Restoration Project may have "worked much more dramatically than 
anyone could have foreseen... satellite imagery showed that a massive 10,000 
square kilometer phytoplankton bloom had developed in the Gulf of Alaska, 
centred around the area which was seeded with iron sulfate. The following year, 
in 2013, catches of pink salmon from the Pacific Northwest showed a 400% 
increase over the previous year."
The corrupted politics of the climate lobby are vividly illustrated by this 
failure of Nature magazine to apply basic standards of rigour and fact checking 
to its false statement about evidence for the Haida Salmon experiment.  
Best of luck to the Chile entrepreneurs.  You are up against a venal climate 
lobby who do not appear to care about biodiversity or climate repair, and who 
are happy to promote false claims denigrating ocean iron fertilization in 
support of dubious political objectives.
Robert Tulip
  
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Ocean Fertilization: A Dangerous Experiment Gone Right | PlanetSave
 A rogue ocean fertilization experiment carried out in 2012 may well prove to 
be the saviour of the world-renowne...  |   |

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      From: Andrew Lockley <andrew.lock...@gmail.com>
 To: geoengineering <geoengineering@googlegroups. com> 
 Sent: Thursday, 25 May 2017, 17:11
 Subject: [geo] Iron-dumping ocean experiment sparks controversy
  

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
 23 May 2017
Article tools
   
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Blickwinkel/AlamyPhytoplankton 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 stories
   
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   - Climate tinkerers thrash out a plan
More related storiesTensions 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 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 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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