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On 6/20/2012 11:45 AM, Christopher Majka wrote:
> On 20-Jun-12, at 12:14 PM, Frederick W. Schueler wrote:
>> whatever happened to the old proposal to suck carbon out of the
>> atmosphere by releasing iron into iron-deficient tropical ocean
>> currents to increase planktonic productivity, and depositing a plume
>> of fixed carbon (and planktonic CaCO3 shells?) on the downstream ocean
>> floor? How would this impact acidification?
> "The only way to stop ocean acidification -- and the only way to stop climate change -- is for all of us to emit less carbon dioxide. There's no way to gerrymander this. We can't postpone action on climate change and ocean acidification until economic conditions are ripe any more than we can postpone death or taxes. We must grapple with these issues now. ...Turning our climate into a hothouse and our oceans into a corrosive brew would be a bleak monument to human stupidity, greed, and shortsightedness. Now is the time to act before we create a corrosive oceanic wasteland."
* no question about that - no fossil fuels were directly used to heat
our dwelling over the past year, and as I wrote at
http://www.pinicola.ca/books/index.htm#HOW2 "Many philosophers have
speculated, with the example of humanity before them, that intelligent
life may be an ephemeral phenomenon, because the ability to over-exploit
a planet may always outstrip the wisdom required to figure out how to
sustain intelligent life on the long term."
> Well, it is an idea, (adding finely ground iron can increase
> photosynthesis in tropical regions thirty-fold) and if things continue
> to deteriorate we may be forced to resort to such ocean engineering
> strategies. It's hard to imagine the engineering challenges of doing
> this on a scale large enough to make a difference to the world's oceans.
> You would need to use enormous amounts of iron and you would generate
> vast quantities of carbohydrates. Even if you did this over deep water,
> how long would this remain stable before decomposing and releasing the
> CO^2?
* lots of questions here, but the main problem seems to be the small
scale of the trials that have been held -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization - I should remember the
rule of never writing about anything before reading the wikipedia
article (which in this case is quite thorough).
fred
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Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
Bishops Mills Natural History Centre - http://pinicola.ca/bmnhc.htm
Mudpuppy Night in Oxford Mills - http://pinicola.ca/mudpup1.htm
Daily Paintings - http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/
South Nation Basin Art & Science Book
http://pinicola.ca/books/SNR_book.htm
RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
(613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/
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