YOUR concept of nature is almost certainly going to influence whether you support the idea of a German ship dumping 20 tons of iron sulphate over 300 square kilometres of Southern Ocean to provoke a massive algal bloom for carbon sequestration.
Those who subscribe to the idea that earth systems are delicately balanced are likely to be horrified and may want to send off a letter to the German government as suggested by Climate Ark to stop the experiment. The ship is already in the Southern Ocean and ready to dump.
Those, who, like Paleontologist Peter Ward, reject the notion of ‘Gaia’, and subscribe to the ‘The Medea Hypothesis’ that there is no balance of nature are likely to favor geo-engineering solutions including to climate change. [Gaia versus Medea discussed here.]
I tend to fall into a third category, recognising that natural systems are dynamic and also generally fairly resilient. I would not advocate large scale geo-engineering unless the problem was well defined and the benefits clearly articulated.
As regards dumping tons of iron sulphate in the Southern Ocean – if an excess of carbon in the atmosphere really is a problem then it is perhaps justified as part of a mix of potential solutions. But I am not convinced that the elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are causing a problem.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Maybe it’s gonna take an ICE AGE to convince some people.
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/NATURE/01/23/paradise.dump/index.html
If this experiment was restricted to a man made salt lake of sufficient size [Australia has this capacity many times over], a lot could be learnt without risk.
EG, built beside coal-fired power stations they could totally absorb their CO2 emissions and produce bio fuel even without the phytoplankton.
“…Those, who, like Palaeontologist Peter Ward, reject the notion of ‘Gaia’, and subscribe to the ‘The Medea Hypothesis’ that there is no balance of nature are likely to favour geo-engineering solutions including to climate change…”
The Gaia hypothesis isn’t automatically against geo-engineering of the biosphere, assuming a suitably reasonable need is established beyond dispute and the outcome is well understood. This case lacks on both accounts.
The Gaia hypothesis has been misappropriate by Greenies as an essentially “conservationist” concept. In fact, the theory’s radical trans-nature implications when understood must be deeply disturbing to anyone seeking to defend the environmental status quo.
Gaia is defined as living entity precisely because the biosphere is so radically at non-equilibrium. Earth’s biosphere has more in common with a mammal’s body than with the other planetary bodies of our solar system.
Our greatest cities, as view through the eyes of an alien visitor in orbit would not appear be any more “unnatural” than a termite mound or pods of whales, although extremely important as an indication as to the course and speed evolution has embarked upon on this world. We are no more foreign to the biosphere than our cerebral cortex cells are to our own bodies.
That’s the most important bit of the Gaia Hypothesis–it implies the utter naturalness of humanity and all our undertakings. For if Gaia is, even only metaphorically speaking, a living organism, then humanity is the dawn of conscious self-awareness in a “being” that has lived over a billion years unaware of its evolution.
We are the Earth’s sentience. The first complex system of cells to be able to vaguely comprehend the vast empirical gestalt of our place in the universe.
Just as Homo Sapiens will be the first phenotype on this planet to take control of its genotype, we also represent, more stunningly, Gaia directly managing her own evolution for the first time in the history of planet Earth.
Modern Western science, which began with the Enlightenment, which began with someone painting a bear in a cave a few tens of thousands of years earlier represents the single greatest quantum leap in evolution since proto-mitochondria was incorporated into some primeval cell structure.
This isn’t hubris or an over-simplification, but a fundamental fact of ontology that brings with it a heavy burden. We are no longer children playing in the Garden of Eden with our fire sticks, but master of our own destiny and with it the destiny of every living system on this planet.
Now we face a “trans-human” future. We may already be one of the last generations of purely human human being left. Nature will be redefined.
This is probably a universal discontinuity, which has occurred many times in our galaxy’s history. The fact that our galaxy doesn’t seem to be seething with interstellar “civilizations” seems to indicate that it’s a paradigm shift that few “Gaias” choose to continue upon. But that’s not the point.
We are perched at the greatest, and perhaps the riskiest, moment in the history of our planet, a moment when evolution will accelerate biologically, environmentally and technological to a pace only limited by our wildest imagination. In fact, from a geological timeframe we ARE the most important, riskiest moment in the history of the planet.
Geo-engineering? We’ve been at it since the first human hand step out of The Dream Time put the fire stick to the bush.
Are these stupid Germans going to go through with this insanity? Here we are going into a little ice age, wherein our CO2 levels could drop a great deal, and these German national socialists want to do a damn fool thing like this.
I don’t think people are talking clearly enough that this is a leftist fraud. There is no other way to approach this, but via the truth. And the truth is that this is clearly science fraud and general fraud.
http://www.booktv.org/watch.aspx?ProgramId=LW-9998
Being a koala, I probably see things from a different perspective. Spending much of my time munching on eucalyptus leaves and sleeping, I get time to think about things like geo-engineering from an Aussie Bear point of view.
We all know our economy is in big trouble.
Demand for our exports of iron ore are slumping, and the cargo ships are being turned back form China. Fortescue Metals, Mount Gibson Iron and Rio Tinto have all taken a beating and our share funds are slumping.
Meanwhile Penny Wong and Tim Flannery keep telling us the world is overheating with far too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Seems to me the solution is bearly obvious.
We just keep digging up the iron ore as before, put it on the ships and then dump it all in the ocean.
Everyone is a winner!
The mining boom is restored, investment in infrastructure takes off, our shares recover AND there will be so much algae floating around in the oceans that we can just about forget about all that emissions trading stuff.
Pretty smart, huh?
Darn it! I knew I should’ve taken that engineering systems course run by Dr Koala.
BTW Wes George at a lecture given by James Lovelock he emphatically denied the idea that the Gaia hypothesis takes earth as a living entity, instead more a self regulating system. In the same lecture he told the story of how the name Gaia was attached to his hypothesis. He lived in the same village as a thriller writer, I think he said Len Deighton. They used to walk around the village together and one day he was explaining the whole idea to this writer and said how he was trying to think up a name for it and the writer immediately suggested ‘Gaia’. Lovelock’s reply was that this would send out the wrong idea but the guy goaded him into doing it.
Its a good name because you know that the people who slag off or alternatively embrace the hypothesis because of supposed mysticism or religious ideas haven’t taken anytime to study it.
Wasn’t it the other writer. The one who wrote about those kids being marooned on an island and a sort of fascist setup developing. I just remember a fat kid, a conch, and a dead pig.
Graeme,
You could be right. The writer you are referring to was William Golding. I was at the lecture, I’m just not sure of the writers name, I thought it was Len Deighton.
Since carbon dioxide has now been show not to matter (http://miskolczi.webs.com/)
this experiment will have little effect.
However it may increase fishing by increasing plankton and giving the fish more to eat. This would be a good thing. There may be a minor cooling effect if more organic sulfates end up in the air to react with cosmic rays and increase cloud cover (The Chilling Stars, Svensmark).
The book was “Lord of the Flies”, and system was anarchic mob rule, at least from my ancient memories from when I read it. over thrity years ago.
The great thing about the iron sulfate is it might help fishery stocks if it does consistently over some years. We fertilize crop lands to great results. We can fertilize the seas and ultimately the food chain will support more large fish. It is about time we do this to offset our depletion of fisheries.
As to climate, it will be as efective as the AGW models are in the first place- not very important.
“Gaia hypothesis”
Is “Gaia” becoming the “God” of the environmental movement? If so, does certain branches of environmentalism move from ‘secular religion’ to ‘religion’. The Gaia Hypothesis struck me as a goofy idea 25 years ago when I came across it in academia and it still does today; it will be interesting to observe if others like Wes take up the preaching of ‘Gaia’ across the internet. If so, the mainstream religious movements (Catholic, Anglican, Scientological…) will have to take new positions with regard to environmentalism and respond more aggressively.
Are these stupid Germans going to go through with this insanity? Here we are going into a little ice age, wherein our CO2 levels could drop a great deal, and these German national socialists want to do a damn fool thing like this.
adding 20 tons of iron sulphate to the ocean is a horrible idea. adding enormous amounts of CO2 to atmosphere a good one.
i would love to live in your world!
“We can fertilize the seas and ultimately the food chain will support more large fish. It is about time we do this to offset our depletion of fisheries.”
Indeed. We can solve one of our massive stuff-ups (maybe even two if you count both fisheries AND anthropogenic CO2) by potentially creating another. Can’t wait until we swallow a lion to catch the dog to catch the cat to catch the rat…..
There will be nothing wrong with adding 20 or 200 or 2000 tons of iron sulfate to the oceans in a highly dilute manner.
It has been tried before with no negative results that I have ever heard about. If wrong, someone please post a link.
Plankton is the basic food of the food chain. More of it will mean more things to eat the plankton, and on up to tasty fish and happy whales.
Just don’t kid yourself about ‘geo-engineering’.
The Gaia Hypothesis is a useful analogy that makes a connexion between hard science and the grand scale of existence. It’s also a conceptual bridge to a new way to understand “nature” and our relationship to it. Geo-engineering in the context of the Gaia Hypothesis is not controversial, it’s inevitable.
It’s understandable that scientific materialists are suspicious of Gaia theory as hard science since it skirts the teleological fringe. However, Gaia’s usefulness as an allegory is not diminished. Gaia subsumes humankind and all our works as purely natural phenomena, the sentience of the biosphere emerging to take control of its own “geophysiological” evolutionary destiny through our empirical self-awareness. We are the hand of Gaia.
This is a deeply unconservative redefinition of our relationship with nature that could form an ethical foundation for a near future where humanity will control the genome, climate, the chemistry of the oceans and probably move a significant portion of our economies off-planet.
Imagine: Machine intelligence coming into its own as a new kind of consciousness to assume prerogatives once reserved for ourselves. The most ridiculous cultural kitsch will come to pass, as it always does. Dogs might be given the power of speech, for instance. Mortality for the wealthy can be postponed for who knows how long, raising questions about just what being human really means. Tasmanian Tigers will be restored to the forests. Tuna the size of small whales will swim gently into the nets of Japanese trawlers when summoned. Steaks will grow on trees. Magpies will deliver the mail and Merinos operate the looms. OK, so I’m having fun…
Morally and ontologically, because we are nature and because our science will deliver us control of the very programs of life, an extra-global civilization may come to believe that all of existence can (even should be) understood as a plastic medium waiting to be sculpted by our hand. Perhaps, a new kind of aesthetics will rise to the highest rung in the ladder of ethics.
Given the trans-human, trans-natural future we face, (assuming we aren’t consumed by war and petty hatreds first), our current definitions of both humanity itself and the nature of the natural are in for a major revision. The Gaia Hypothesis could be viewed as the first tentative 20th century step toward this re-evaluation of humanity’s place in the universe.
I’m quite sure should a Victorian gentleman or woman be resurrected to visit Sydney in 2009, they would be appalled by what we have done with culture in the last 120 years. Yet, there it is. Why should we expect to feel any more comfortable contemplating the philosophical foundations for the bio-geophysiological possibilities of 2139?
In the science fiction novel Timescape people from the future try to warn us for this experiment (by modulating signals in a tachyon experiment in england) as it had led to a global algal bloom, the rotting residue killing all the fish in the ocean .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timescape
Since the CO2 levels in our atmosphere are at pretty near a historical low point, it seems to me that attempting this kind of experiment risks far more than could conceivably be gained.
Most plants stop growing when CO2 gets as low as 150ppm/v and photosynthesis ceases at 90ppm/v. So, all we risk losing is the food we eat and the oxygen we breathe if this kind of experiment goes wrong.
When people keep hearing that CO2 is a ‘dangerous pollutant’ they will tolerate this kind of lunacy, and since the new US government is promising to classify CO2 as just that, expect more nonsense like this.
The EZ company near Hobart used to put large quantities (170,000 tons per year!!) of iron sulphate (jarosite) waste from a zinc smelter onto ships and dump it offshore into the Southern Ocean. Environmentalists didn’t like it although I am not sure that any ill efects were ever measured. In any case, I don’t think they do it any more.
Once again the real question is whether we are solving the correct problem or just creating a new problem.
The greens be they German, French, American or Australian should test it on themselves first.
Wes George: not only are we our planet’s sentience we are Gaia’s reproductive system. Nearly 40 years ago we established a beach head for life on the Moon. Next time it will stick.
Screw the greenies and Luddites. More high technology, high energy civilisation. Either the rest of the universe has other life including sentience in which case we should find it in order to better know Creation or it is lifeless and we have the immense task of bringing this gift to it. As Ray Bradbury once wrote: “to a lifeless, sightless universe we bring the gift of eyes”.
On second thoughts, lock up all the greens in a big bubble and slowly extract the CO2 and see how sustainable they become.
I too would like to be in Jenifers third category in recognising that ‘natural systems are dynamic and also generally fairly resilient’. That is certainly true of the ones still about. Jennifer also does not like to intervene unless ‘ benefits can be clearly articulated’. I am trying to think generically of a decision where that is the case. Is there some other way than comparing benefits of taking some action against benefits of some other action, like doing nothing. Both scenarios are riddled with risks and uncertainty about long term benefits. And who gets to value the benefits anyway.
“The Gaia Hypothesis is a useful analogy that makes a connexion between hard science and the grand scale of existence.”
Mixing science with non-science = crap.
Those opposing this experiment are’nt doing so because it might upset Gaia. They are opposed because it might work. The greens have spent more than a decade trying to scare us to death so we will adopt their absurd policies.
They will vigorously oppose any solution to global warming that does not involve donning hair shirts and retreating ‘back’ to a to a non existent earlier simpler pastoral life where we all live in perfect harmony with nature.
I put this forward as a testable hypothesis: Any technology that is a viable solution to global warming (if it is actually a problem) will be vigorously denounced by the greens. For example, if someone tomorrow announced the development of a form of solar energy that was economically viable and could deliver base load, the greens would eventually find a way to oppose it.
Max,
The real question is, what is the real problem?
Putting trivial amounts of fertilizer in the seas at areas that could improve fisheries will do nothing.
Hans,
I think I still have that novel. Rememebr: it was science *fiction*, like AGW.
We are not going to cause a global runaway algal bloom anymore than a bit more CO2 is going to cause a runaway climate tipping point.
The FeSO4 is a great fertilizer in the Antarctic region, where there is a deficiency in the water and limits plankton growth.
I think the question is healthy fisheries, not climate management. We can get one and I doubt if the other is possible with our poor understanding of climate.
Will, there are many ways to know a thing. A cloud, for example, can be described in paint or in poetry as well as in voxels inside a mathematical model. I’m not sure which way of “knowing” a cloud is really more accurate. However I am quite sure we would be all be the poorer if Turner and Constable had never painted a single cloud and all we had were meteorological descriptions.
There is actually no way to fully grasp any particular cloud empirically, yet I have heard it done in poetry. How is that?
Be careful how you define what you know and how you know it. You may be surprised how slippery reality really is.
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/turner/i/staffa.jpg
spangled drongo “Maybe it’s gonna take an ICE AGE to convince some people”.
I’ll tell you something, there’s something going on here on the west coast of Canada that is far more than a La Nina. I have experienced both El Ninos and La Ninas over the last 10 years, and what is going on now feels far different. We have experienced a consistent cold, hovering around 0 C, that is unusual for this part of the world. Normally, we get a week, here or there, of temperatures around 0 C, but the norm through the winter is up around 5C to 10 C, with lots of rain. This winter, dating back to several weeks of late fall, has been unseasonably cold. Hope it’s not the ice age you’re on about.
The Germans should be thrown in jail for polluting the oceans.
“there are many ways to know a thing. A cloud, for example, can be described in paint or in poetry as well as in voxels inside a mathematical model. I’m not sure which way of “knowing” a cloud is really more accurate.”
There are many ways to know a thing both rationally and irrationally. Unless you want to head back to the dark ages, it’s important to try as hard as we can to include the multiple rational ways, and exclude the infinite irrational ways. Since appreciation of poetry and painting is about achieving a particular emotional state, there is nothing irrational about poetry in that context. On the other hand, viewing environmental goals irrationality and emotionally, i.e., poetically or artistically, is ultimately deeply damaging to successful environment outcomes. It’s all too easy to talk crap… it’s very very hard to maintain rationality in a world in which there are so many uncertainties.
Great idea, as long as the results of the experiment can be effectively and completely collected
What about a similar experiment with a 6M biochar plant at some local council green dump?
Didn’t the Germans already have a go at dumping millions of tonnes of iron into the oceans using U-Boats between 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 as well as dropping several millions of tones at Scapa Flow? Not counting all the toxins and assorted cargoes on those millions of tonnes?
In fact didn’t the English,Americans and Japanese all have a go at this practice also?
Gordon,
Some of your recent -50 deg F etc temperatures fair take my breath away and I feel guilty enjoying our 30 deg C summer.
Could the Canadian sceptics do a short house exchange with the Australian warmaholics?
Beano,
You hit upon the root of the problem!
What with all that iron dumped at sea years ago and all that iron in the dust bowl conditions, both of which aren’t occurring anymore, the latter from minimum tillage, the sea is simply starving for its regular iron diet.
That’s wots causing the heating!
First, let me say that I believe that man should be good stewards of the earth. On the other hand we should be cautious, at times, in how we attempt to limit our impact. I reflect back on the days of the first catalytic converters on cars. All of the sudden we increased our emissions, massively, of SO2. At the time governments and the EPA in America said not to worry about it. The SO2 emissions were harmless despite the amount being belched out by millions of cars. A few years later in the US the Copper industry was shutting down smelting operations. They could not afford to reduce emissions of SO2 and were being blamed for the acid rain problem.
Catalytic converters on cars were, in the long run after advancing to duel bed converters, a good addition. Cleaner air is the proof of that. The duel bed converter technology was what many wanted to wait for initially. One cannot help but wonder if we had waited a year or two would we still not have ended up with cleaner air AND avoided the acid rain problem?
The attempt of the entertainment industry to create ‘time travel’ always intrigues me. Many are well done despite flaws. They strive to address paradox issues, yet, always end up leaving holes. A paradox or two not resolved which would end up creating unintended consequences. With man’s activities, his attempts to control his environment, he oft produces unintended consequences. Many he may not fully realize the full impact of.
The relatively simple practice of cloud seeding. It removes from the atmosphere water content that ‘nature’ had intended to deliver elsewhere. Thus, depriving the natural delivery point of needed precipitation. Then, if a natural storm dumps rain on the lands which had recently received forced precipitation ….. flooding occurs. Hence, drought in one area, flooding in another. Both caused by man’s intentional intervention.
On my blog I recently posted a thread on the decrease in rate of annual additions of CO2 to the Atmosphere. It was demonstrated comparing two 20 year trends…
http://penoflight.com/climatebuzz/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/co2comp4.jpg
Also the change reflected in long term trend….
http://penoflight.com/climatebuzz/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/co2ratecomb-550×217.jpg
And finally, in the recent short term trend….
http://penoflight.com/climatebuzz/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/corrected9808mlco2.jpg
Short term trends can of course be challenged as non-valid indicators. However, the cool PDO should increase the phytoplankton population, a slight cooling of the seas (if accurate) will increase sequestion of CO2, and many other factors appear to be in play. Thus it would appear the reduction in rate of annual CO2 additions to the atmosphere would be the expected result.
Perhaps now is not the time for man to dash off and attempt to rush into his own ideas on corrective action. Now is not the time to once again employ a single bed catalytic converter or seed the clouds. I suggest that now is the time for patience, not panicked actions which may have unintended consequences.
Lee
“There are many ways to know a thing both rationally and irrationally.”
Irrational knowledge is an oxymoron. Irrationality is a variety of ignorance. Synonyms for “irrational” are “baseless, unfounded, foolish, ludicrous, ridiculous, absurd…”
And it’s tautological to claim the best way to be rational is to not be irrational.
Although Turner’s paintings are Romantic and do achieve a particular emotional state, few artists set “about achieving a particular emotional state.” Emotional states in the arts are simply palettes, a means to an end, not the end in itself.
In fact, “art” is an inquiry, often rudely experimental, into the nature of the subject. Art and science were synonymic until quite recently (18 th century). Even today in many human endeavours including research inquiries, the scientific method is most productive when it works hand in hand with creative acumen and sudden insight.
“It’s all too easy to talk crap.” Point well illustrated.
My apologies for the off-topic digression.
http://www.success.co.il/knowledge/images/Pillar8-Thought-and-Art-Vitruvian-Man-Leonardo-da-Vinci.jpg
Iron sulfate in solution is quickly converted to ferric iron (Fe+3). This is a very powerful coagulant, and in concentrations of a few mg/L it would precipitate colloidal- and algal-sized particles out of the water column. It is very widely used in water and sewage treatment for just this purpose. So much for stimulating photosynthesis.
Moreover, ferric iron is a fish toxicant, because it also coagulates gill mucus in the gills, suffocating the fish.
The idiotic Germans (is that a redundancy?) might argue that the iron concentration will be too small to have any nasty effects, but mixing 20 t of iron sulfate down to a few mg/L of iron quickly is impossible, so some local precipitation and fish kill near the dosing points is inevitable.
There is also a theoretical reason to doubt the efficacy; it’s called the “trophic cascade.” This is a piece of ecosystem theory that states that the effect of nutrient additions on a food chain is to increase the biomass in the top predators; any increase in the primary producers is rapidly grazed down. Of course, as biomass is passed up the food chain from one predator to another, most of it is oxidized back to CO2. The net effect of iron on CO2 is nearly zero.
The numerous steel ships sunk in the world wars do not react this way. The iron in the steel does slowly oxidize to ferric oxide, but this is a scale that first adheres to the underlying steel and then flakes off.
Anyway, the experiment was already run several years ago with no lasting effect on photosynthesis.
“And it’s tautological to claim the best way to be rational is to not be irrational.”
And who invented that claim other than you? (You have a genuine love of mental masturbation…)
But as I said before, it will be interesting to see if ‘gaia preaching’ of the type you’re indulging in will become a more mainstream activity, although I would expect to see it in a form that is less overtly religious in tone.
(1) Let’s dump Iron sulfate because it may potentially rebalance the environment
(2) Let’s not dump Iron sulfate because it may potentially damage the environment
(3) Let’s do nothing as any human activity would upset the balance of nature (displease Gaia)
Options 1 or 2 are rational if there are logical grounds for taking or not taking action. Going with option 3 is just being idiotic.
The concept of “the balance of nature” is romantic Victorian romantic ideal. I’m surprised Will would choose such poetic language to describe the biosphere’s complexity.
Researchers talk about the biosphere as a complex thermodynamic system kept in an extreme state of non-equilibrium through a vast array of homeostatic feedback mechanisms, which have yet to be well described. The “purpose” of this complex system (if you’ll forgive a teleological metaphor) is to dissipate heat by remaining at maximum entropy production.
The idyllic notion of a balance of nature suggests a simple cause and effect relationship that can be managed by reductionism – or NOT – depending on whether you are a conservationist or project engineer…
That paradigm is being superseded by new conceptualizations of both the natural and our relationship with nature.
Likewise, Will’s characterization of the Gaia Hypothesis as a Greenie religion is apt, but shallow.
The Gaia Hypothesis has philosophical implications Will and the Greenies have missed. If Gaia can be imagined as planetary being (metaphor, Will, calm down) then we are, as the first self aware organelles in this being capable of rational thought and scientific manipulation of information, Gaia’s sentience awakening.
If we are Gaia conscious awareness, then any geo-engineering we undertake, including building a global economy, terraforming Mars, or even conducting nuclear war to the point of extinction, is all part of a natural process.
We are the evolutionary course of life in our solar system unfolding at a new higher state of complexity that seems unique (ie Unnatural) simply because it has never been observed, but is obviously a physically possible state that could occur any where else in the universe where appropriate conditions exist around star systems.
By merging humanity as the sentience of a much greater gestalt the Gaia hypothesis literally frees us from any Victorian moral appeals to the so-called “balance of nature.” How we choose to adjust the homeostasis of the biosphere is up to us since by definition we must be working on the behalf of nature… Any chaotic unintended consequences are just as natural as the consequences of the unpredictable course of natural selection in finch beaks.
Beano “Didn’t the Germans already have a go at dumping millions of tonnes of iron into the oceans using U-Boats…”
Yes…but unfortunately for them, they miscalculated the infallability of the U-Boats, and the latter ended up at the bottom of the ocean as well. It goes to show that if you dump things in the ocean it doesn’t pay off.
spangled drongo “Some of your recent -50 deg F etc temperatures fair take my breath away…”
I don’t get hit with those extremes on the west coast. Vancouver is in the banana belt of Canada, and we get nose-bleeds if the temperature drops below 0 C. We’re ragarded as wooses by the rest of Canada. However, I have lived temporarily in climates with – 50 C and it can be both good and bad.
The good thing is walking out in – 50 C on a bright, sunny, wind-free day. Of course, you’re dressed for it. It’s really amazing to watch tiny ice crystals falling around you. Any moisture in the air freezes and falls as ice crystals.
The bad happens when the wind picks up and blows the powdered snow around, creating thick, fog-like conditions. As a rookie in that clime, I got caught on a drive on a beautiful, clear day. The first indication is a tire-high mist sweeping across the road. You lose sight of the centre line and even the road itself. It’s like you’re suddenly riding on top of a cloud. Just as you’re getting over the effect of this new scenario, the blowing powder covers your entire car.
That’s when it gets really scary. You can’t pull off the road because you’d get caught in a snow bank. You can’t stop because idiots come tearing up behind you.
Batteries wont start a car at that temperature and you can open a can of oil and hold it upside down without it flowing out. In those climates, cars have block heaters to keep the water warm at night. Of course, you have to be near an electrical outlet and have an extension cord. On one trip, I did not have a block heater, so I had to change my oil to synthetic oil (gels instead of freezing) and take the battery into the house at night. I joked about taking my battery to bed, to keep it warm. In Canada, you use anti-freeze rated at -30 C, at least, as a matter of course. At least, if you’re smart you do. The high-techies have their ignitions wired so they can start their cars remotely from the house so they’ll warm up.
I have worked night shifts outside at -25 C. You survive it with layers of clothes, like thermal underwear, T-shirts, shirts, turtle neck sweaters, jackets, more jackets, balaclavas, light mitts, heavy mitts on top of those, jeans, and coveralls over it all. Everybody looks funny bulked up like that but nobody is laughing about it.
On construction sites, you get a quilted hard-hat liner with lugs that velcro under your chin. I was just using contruction boots with steel toes and shanks, and even though I had felt liners in them, I couldn’t stop the cold coming through the soles. Of course, with balaclavas and all that, it gets hard to get your hard hat on and your safety glasses fog up from your breath. You also take many trips to the john to warm up, since it’s about the only place besides the lunch trailer there is any heat. If you’re in the john legitimately, like nature calling, it can be a real chore to get stripped down sufficiently to take care of business, especially in a tight stall. There’s mud all over the floor from melting snow/ice and you don’t want to dip your clothes in that.
I was defending unions a while back and someone took exception. Our contract called for heated enclosures to be supplied when the temperatures dipped below – 20 C. When it did, the supervisors quibbled about it. They were sitting in heated trailers and they expected us to survive all night with no heaters. I’d hate to think what non-union workers go through when you have trouble enforcing a contract that calls for heat when the temperature drops to killer levels.
There’s a book by the famous mountain climber David Breashears. He describes looking for work in the oil fields of Wyoming and having to sleep in a lumber yard, in a sleeping bag, at – 40 C. Those crazy Yanks. He couldn’t afford a hotel and everything was non-union. Breashears had to take exactly the conditions he was handed, or lump it. The conditions he describes on the jobs are positively archaic.
Employers can be real dickheads at times. Imagine expecting someone to work in – 40 C conditions and treating them like crap. At least we got sent home if the temperatures dropped to – 35 C, but only because they didn’t want to take the chance of us getting frostbite. It wasn’t that they cared about our welfare, it was about the higher rates they’d have to pay to the Worker’s Compensation Board if any of us had to be treated for frostbite or exposure.
The land is fertilized to grow more food. Why not the seas fertilized to produce more autotrophs?
Behold this wonder, do not fear it.