Six Tons of ‘Geoengineered’ Iron: Just another Drop in the Ocean
Posted by jennifer, April 11th, 2009 - under News, Opinion.
Tags: Climate & Climate Change
THERE were concerns that a plan by the German government to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by dumping iron in the southern ocean would have all sorts of perverse outcomes.
Earlier in the year a spokesperson for the World Wildlife Fund suggested the plan may violate international agreements on marine protection because the algae growth from the iron pollution would result in eutrophication, defined as a proliferation of plant life that reduces oxygen content in water and eliminates other sea life. Some no doubt had images of Blue whales turning belly-up from such a misguided intervention.
The plan was described as the biggest trial ever of iron fertilization, a technology which could stop global warming at very little cost.
Such has been the increasing interest in technological fixes that even the American Meteorological Society has plans for a ‘Geoengineering Statement’ including advice on how to better regulate such proposals.
Anyway, despite protests, the German government gave the green light and a 300-square-kilometre (115-sqare-mile) area of ocean was fertilized with six tonnes of dissolved iron earlier this year.
As expected, the iron stimulated growth of algae, in particular phytoplankton.
The original idea was that the short-lived phytoplankton would die and drop to the bottom of the ocean and become a form of sequestered carbon.
But instead the German scientists observed the phytoplankton eaten by krill which were in turn probably eaten by Blue whales. So instead of ending up dead, the Blue whales have likely benefits from the iron ‘pollution’.
Natural systems are complex, and in this case evidently highly resilient including to manipulation through geoengineering. It seems dumping six tonnes of iron was, well, “just another drop in the ocean”. Certainly it didn’t stop climate change or despoil this pristine environment.
There is so much we don’t understand about the oceans, ocean ecosystems, and also climate.
Recent findings published in ‘Global Biogeochemical Cycles’ suggest a 50 percent decrease in the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the North Atlantic Ocean over the last ten years. It’s not krill that is considered at fault here, but rather changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation; which is also thought to control the strength and direction of westerly winds and storms in this region.
There is also the worry that because the oceans absorb and emit carbon dioxide depending on their temperature, that if the world’s oceans start to cool as suggested by recent data from the three thousand free-floating Argo buoys there will be less carbon dioxide emitted from the oceans. Hang-on, this could be good news and reduce the need for all sorts of immediate solutions to the claimed global climate crisis.
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Notes and Links
The American Meteorological Society defines geoengineering as the deliberate deployment of large scale changes to the earth system in the hope of counteracting the worst effects of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission.
Thomas et al. Changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation influence CO2 uptake in the North Atlantic over the past 2 decades. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 2008; 22 (4): GB4027 DOI: 10.1029/2007GB003167
Graph of estimated emissions from worldwide fossil fuel use and the annual increase in atmospheric CO2 sourced from http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/contents.htm , via Tom Quirk. Click on the image for a larger – better view.
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/03/the-ocean-really-is-cooling/
http://weblog.greenpeace.org/makingwaves/archives/2009/03/ocean_fertilization_aint_gonna.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aCumfUmTpAJs&refer=home
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090408195557.htm
“Your links all support my position with specific mention of benefits to the species from catch cleaning etc. I also note the detail and volume of research on Japanese longliners and the dearth of research on the compensating beneficial effects.”
Really? I could not access all the full papers I provided links for, just the abstracts. I did not see specific mention of benefits in all of these. How interesting you can. Did you do a search for information on “compensating benefical effects”? I guess you did. I wonder why researchers would be more interested in understanding why wildlife is declining than what was “benefiting” it? What logic could that hold? There is research on provisioning of wildlife. Perhaps you could read what real and presumed benefits come from provisioning?
“It was the lead article that mentioned Blue Whales, moron.”
No shit Ian. You actually got that right. I made no mention of blue whales until you wrote: “The key point for readers to note is that the albatross example was provided as evidence that nature can benefit from human activities, just as the Krill and Blue Whales did from the oceanic algal bloom from iron deposition. Greenpimp, and our mouth frothing mate Rob, were completely incapable of recognising the possibility that this beneficial outcome could result.”
Did the blue whales and krill actually benefit Ian? I presume this has been measured and published somewhere. I would appreciate learning about this “benefit” you speak of. Oh wait, in the following sentence you mention the “possibility”. Please make up your mind, and not just to suit your story. I have not commented at all on any assumed benefits from the experiment on blue whales. I corrected an error you posted on albatross. So trying to imply I have been incapable of recognising something when I have not even disciussed it is as deliberately misleading and wrong as writing “was repeated by Rob with his insistence that albatross have only been subject to adverse impacts from man, and all of them from one particular source, longliners.” I have corrected this lie by you but any admission you are wrong is totally beyond your realm! You are doing a very poor job of trying to misprepresent what I write Ian, as well as Tim Lowe. I suggest you learn a bit more about topics instead of trying to be the self-imposed expert on everything and realise it is your navel you are looking at all the time.
Drongo,
small rhymes and poetry about birds and their songs are a culture treasory as well as a treasure about the natural world to our children….the Swedish Ornithologicla homepage has an entire site for different rhymes about birds and their songs etc….
” At sea, such soul birds include the storm petrel (Hydrobates pelagicus). Storm petrels, as their name suggests, were taken as a sign of approaching bad weather, so sailors saw them as helpful and considered it unlucky to shoot one. Moreover, into the nineteenth century, perhaps later, many seamen believed that petrels should be spared because they harbored dead sailors’ souls.
Seagulls (Laridae), too, warned of approaching storm. An extension of this was the belief that they cried before a disaster. As with petrels, in West European fishing communities it was thought unlucky to kill a gull; and, as with petrels, some said they embodied the souls of fishermen and sailors, especially those who had drowned. Belief in gulls as soul-birds was still active in coastal districts of Great Britain and Ireland up to at least the late nineteenth century
http://www.deathreference.com/Sh-Sy/Soul-Birds.html
And I have just had a rough talk with a poacher who said he was a protection hunter of barnacle geese and called the police for this….
” It is sometimes claimed that deep-sea sailors believed that the albatross brought bad weather and that killing one was unlucky because the souls of sailors reposed in them. However, these beliefs cannot be proved as existing before Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798):
At length did cross an Albatross,
Through the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God’s name.
Coleridge is said to have based the mariner’s shooting of the albatross—an act that brought doom on his ship—on an episode in Shelvocke’s Voyages (1719). But in Voyages the bird was a black albatross, shot by someone who “imagin’d, from his colour, that it might be some ill omen.” Whether or not the superstition against shooting albatrosses generally began with Coleridge, it was never widespread: They were regularly shot at by ships’ crews, who, among other things, made their webbed feet into tobacco pouches. “
Ann,
What I love about the pelagic birds is their ability to survive with [seemingly] little comfort compared to what forrest and plain offer land birds.
They are so like sailors and fishermen, drawn to the ocean with the promise of easy riches.
When man thinks he is on the verge of oblivion in a severe storm, these birds, particularly the wandering albatross, just seem to say to him, “relax, nothing to worry about here”.
Albatross tobacco pouches sound interesting. I’m not sure there are easy riches for pelagic birds. Remember, they are using up the fuel they consume and have to travel vast distances to find it. Your sailors and fishermen have their food on board. But turn it around to a winter’s day of calm weather when your wanderer is plonked on the ocean’s surface like an oceanic dodo and you can hear the fishermen saying “relax, nothing to worry about here.”! It’s all relative.
Mmmmm…..might have a sailor’s soul at home right now!!!!
http://annimal.bloggsida.se/diverse/yesterday-evenings-patients
Becalmed sailor reassures albatross……..woman bites dog……
Happens all the time.
“Becalmed sailor reassures albatross……..woman bites dog……
Happens all the time.”
Not sure of what point you are trying to make and if you are being sarcastic about what I wrote. Please elaborate.
Nice photos on your site Ann. Good for you putting in so much hard work for those birds.
Thanks Rob, however the site is under construction so all stuff might disappear sometimes , but thanks again for the positive feedback…..actually hadn’t any clue what Drongo meant with his last statement as well;)
I suspect he couldn’t get his head around the concept and decided to be a jerk instead. Keep up the good work Ann and all the best with the blog.