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Your geoengineering item clearly reveals you either don’t know much about the state of the oceans or worse you don’t care. You seem to propose that all is well enough with the oceans that we should simply do nothing to save them. You utterly ignore the more that 1000 billion tonnes of CO2 already spewed into the air during the course of the fossil fuel age and the fact that the absorption of just 1/4 of that has left the oceans in dire straits. The rest of this already airborne carbon bomb will slowly dissolve into the surface oceans for the next few centuries regardless of whether we launch additional CO2 bombs into the air. The deadly dose of the first carbon bomb is more than sufficient to destroy ocean life and ecosystems as we know it and send the oceans into an ecosystem reboot to the state they were in a billion years ago before green plants and subsequent animal life forms evolved on this blue planet. Got it! The first carbon bomb is deadly enough, so what might we do about IT! Or do we want to see this planet become a planet of slime alone.
The only force on this planet capable of competing with the acid forming reaction of CO2 in water, you know H2O+CO2=H2CO3 carbonic acid, is green plant photosynthesis. But wait since 30 years ago when our ocean observing satellites began giving us a clear picture of ocean plant life, the phytoplankton, we have observed massive decimating declines. The Southern Ocean has lost 12% of its greenness, the phytoplankton and along with it 80% of its krill, the North Atlantic has lost 17% of its plants and almost all of its cod, the North Pacific 26% of its plants and most of its salmon, and the some tropical seas 50% of its plants and reports are that the South Eastern Pacific now has the clearest water on earth, clear than the lakes buried beneath miles of ice on Antarctica away from the sun for millions of years. This is not solely due to acidification it is more due to the nurturing role CO2 has on terrestrial plants where it has, from the same satellite observations, vastly improved ground cover and reduced dust in the wind. That dust in the wind, now dramatically in decline globally brought and ought to bring vital mineral micronutrients to the ocean plants. It’s loss it tied lock step with the demise of ocean plant life. So is this a doomsday story, yes and no.
Twenty years ago the ocean science community began intensive research on how to replenish micronutrients to the ocean, especially the iron that is so potent in supporting photosynthesis. If the iron that we have denied the oceans from yesterdays emissions of CO2 can be replenished the ocean plants will instantly respond and be restored. If we could manage to add just a few hundreds of thousands of tonnes of perfect iron to the ocean pastures they would bloom again and compete for CO2 with the acid forming reaction. In the early eighties the more abundant ocean plants were fixing 4-5 billion tonnes of CO2 into plankton life instead of today’s ocean acid that those billions of tonnes of CO2 form. Don’t simply ignore the fact that even if we were to stop emission of all new CO2 today and for all tomorrows yesterdays CO2 is already a near lethal dose for the oceans. Once again the only force of nature capable of competing for that CO2 are the ocean plants but they are disappearing before our very eyes and will not be up to the task without our help. We must replenish and restore the oceans and if the scientists from CSIRO are correct, and they are, their Southern Ocean (least afflicted) will be over the CO2 tipping point by 2030, that’s 20 years we have not merely to spin bogus stories and debate the issues but 20 years we have to succeed in restoring the ocean pastures to the state of health of even 30 years ago.
So your story which blindly or poisonously (you choose) infers that replenishing the oceans with natural iron mineral dust is some sort of crazed and dangerous and unknown geoengineering is equivalent to your calling for the continued genocide of life in the oceans. Get a life or at least save life in the 70% blue part of this small blue planet before its too late.
Read more about replenishing and restoring the SEAS and TREES at http://www.planktos-science.com
I think you misjudge my concern for the oceans, and my broader concern over geoengineering proposals beyond the scope of OIF.
If the time line is as short as you suggest for ocean acidification, then we have reached the “last resort,” of which I speak in the piece. However, I have yet to read anything that suggests a nutrient solution has been proven out.
Reporting on the science suggests several options are in the early stages of development. I would be happy to point to these sources, and I intend to check the sources at your website, to see, if I have missed something significant.
I fully support continued testing. If the point of my column was not clear, let me try to state it more succinctly: Due to man’s track record for hubris, I am frightened by the thought of large-scale manipulations seeking quick-results on the ecosphere. But sadly, we have arrived at the point where such schemes must be seriously considered.