Iron Seeding Ocean Test A Bust - Resulting Plankton Bloom Devoured By Zooplankton - AFP

[hatrack]

BERLIN (AFP) — Indian and German scientists have said that a controversial experiment has "dampened hopes" that dumping hundreds of tonnes of dissolved iron in the Southern Ocean can lessen global warming. The experiment involved "fertilising" a 300-square-kilometre (115-sqare-mile) area of ocean inside the core of an eddy -- an immense rotating column of water -- with six tonnes of dissolved iron.

As expected, this stimulated growth of tiny planktonic algae or phytoplankton, which it was hoped would take out of the atmosphere carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas blamed for climate change, and absorb it. However, the scientists from India's National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) and Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) did not count on these phytoplankton being eaten by tiny crustacean zooplankton.

"The cooperative project Lohafex has yielded new insights on how ocean ecosystems function," an AWI statement published on Monday said. "But it has dampened hopes on the potential of the Southern Ocean to sequester significant amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) and thus mitigate global warming."

Earlier projects with iron fertilisation were more successful because they used algae protected by hard shells that do not thrive in the Southern Ocean, the AWI said.

EDIT

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hLkK_2d0XWE2KVPhWaE0fZPeycnA

[izquierdista]

1. Oh well, worth a try

Now if the biomass of the phytoplankton PLUS the zooplankton in the eddy is considered, maybe there is more carbon being contained in the water, and not in the form of dissolved CO2.

If mankind wants to erase his imbalance of burning all the fossil fuels he can find, he is going to have to find some mechanism of carbon sequestration that works. I like the idea of trying to re-vegetate the Sahara desert. It could be done, step by step, by nurturing desert plants that green the land, which in turn would lead to more rainfall, which would lead to more desert plants.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. The Sahara Forest project

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/02/alternativeenergy.solarpower

Seawater greenhouses to bring life to the desert

The planned project would use solar power to evaporate salt water, generating cool air and pure water thereby allowing food to be grown

Alok Jha, green technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 September 2008 15.50 BST

The Sahara Forest project will use seawater and solar power to grow food in greenhouses across the desert. Photograph: Exploration Architecture

Vast greenhouses that use seawater to grow crops could be combined with solar power plants to provide food, fresh water and clean energy in deserts, under an ambitious proposal from a team of architects and engineers.

The http://www.thefutureofscience.org/speaker/abstract/PatonCharlie.pdf">Sahara Forest project would marry huge greenhouses with concentrated solar power (CSP), which uses mirrors to focus the sun's rays and generate heat and electricity. The installations would turn deserts into lush patches of vegetation, according to its designers, and without the need to dig wells for fresh water, which has depleted acquifers in many parts of the world.

The team includes one of the lead architects behind Cornwall's http://www.edenproject.com/">Eden project and demonstration plants are already running in Tenerife, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

Plants cannot grow in deserts because of the extreme temperatures and lack of nutrients and water. Charlie Paton, one of the Sahara Forest team and the inventor of the http://www.seawatergreenhouse.com/}seawater greenhouse> concept, said his technology was a proven way to transform arid environments.

…

[phantom power]

3. we just need to simultaneously seed with a zooplankton predator...

what could go wrong?

[happyslug]

4. Or go with what the earlier tests used, algae with shells

The only question is how will the algae with Shells affect the Southern Ocean? The article said such shells are NOT native to the Southern Ocean. That leads to the next question why? The Southern Ocean, by definition, is that Ocean that surrounds Antarctica. There is no clear line separating the Southern Ocean from the Indian or Pacific Oceans (The same can be said of the Atlantic, but its connection with the Southern Ocean is very small given the Antarctic Peninsula, St Helena, South Africa and Argentina). Both the Indian and Pacific Oceans have "Ocean Deserts" between the Southern Ocean, which teams with life, and both Oceans as each near the Continents (The Atlantic does NOT have such Ocean Desert, given that South America reaches down to the Antarctic Peninsula providing the Atlantic access to the Continents for the length of the Atlantic).

The Continents are important for their are the source of Iron and other minerals needed by the Algae to exist. The further the Water of the Oceans are away from Land, the less Algae exits. The Southern Indian Ocean and the Southern Pacific Oceans are the furthest from any other land and thus have the lowest amount of iron and other Minerals (Which are used by Algae closet to the Coast).

The purpose of this experiment was to use an Algae, that exists in the Southern Ocean, in the Ocean desert of the Indian Ocean. Previous experiments have used Algae from the Central Pacific. Those Experiments worked (Which is one of the reason many people opposed this experiment, it had already been done). The issue is what environmental hazard exists in using the Algae with Shells over the Algae without Shells? I suspect no hazard for both are spread by existing currents all through the oceans and thus exist in these Ocean Deserts already, but an environmental study should be done anyway to make sure (as much as we can scientifically) no harm is caused by using the Shelled Algae from the Central Pacific instead of the un-shell from the Southern Ocean.

[Nihil]

5. The way that the oceans are going ...

... all algae are going to be without shells, regardless of whether
they start out that way or not ...
:-(

[happyslug]

10. The type of Algae one just one of many problems with this attempt

For more on Iron Fertilization see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization

http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/2203.html

[Nihil]

6. Hurrah!

Hopefully that has taken one of the nutty plans off their list.

Now to get the d*ckheads who believe in orbital sunshades to stop ...
:-)

[jpak]

7. Gee - who could have predicted this outcome???

None of the previous dozen or so mesoscale iron-enrichment experiments sequestered CO2 in the deep ocean.

Every one of them induced a bacterioplankton and microzooplankton bloom that recycled iron-enhanced phytoplankton production right back to CO2.

Furthermore - diatoms are not "hard shelled-algae? WTF

Also - "arduous" 2.5 months at sea - wusses!!!111

:evilgrin:

[kristopher]

8. Here we go again.

Not being able to collect accurate data is not the same as "None of the previous dozen or so mesoscale iron-enrichment experiments sequestered CO2 in the deep ocean."

The entire food chain uses carbon and the detritus sequesters carbon. While the controlled experiments have been unable to document the amount sequestered, the large scale proof of concept was provided by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines. The 40,000 tons of iron dust this dumped in oceans around the world resulted in a concurrent decrease in atmospheric CO2 and rise in oxygen levels.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v385/n6617/pdf/385587b0.pdf

Your opposition to the use of this technique is well founded under the precautionary principle, but given the current state of the planet, the precautionary principle may not be the best guideline to employ.

[tom_paine]

9. At least we tested it. We could have just jumped right in and dumped megatons of iron in the ocean.

That's the customary way of we primates.

Monkeys learn. Too little too late, but monkeys learn.

A pity. I was kind of looking forward to the headlines in 10 years "Unforseen Consequences of Iron Seeding Accelerate Ocean Acidification and Global Warming".

Maybe the problem is that we didn't dump enough iron into the oceans. More will surely push us through this blip and get things moving in a proper direction!

MORE iron, not more CAUTION.

:rofl: