It's at the end of a long process that starts with coal.
Posted on 07/24/2012 1:06:15 PM PDT by neverdem
Geoengineering hopes revived as study of iron-fertilized algal blooms shows they deposit carbon in the deep ocean when they die.
In the search for methods to limit global warming, it seems that stimulating the growth of algae in the oceans might be an efficient way of removing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere after all.
Despite other studies suggesting that this approach was ineffective, a recent analysis of an ocean-fertilization experiment eight years ago in the Southern Ocean indicates that encouraging algal blooms to grow can soak up carbon that is then deposited in the deep ocean as the algae die.
In February 2004, researchers involved in the European Iron Fertilization Experiment (EIFEX) fertilized 167 square kilometres of the Southern Ocean with several tonnes of iron sulphate. For 37 days, the team on board the German research vessel Polarstern monitored the bloom and demise of single-cell algae (phytoplankton) in the iron-limited but otherwise nutrient-rich ocean region.
Researchers studying iron-fertilized algal blooms from the research vessel Polarstern have shown that carbon in dead algae sinks to the deep ocean.
Philipp Assmy/AWI, Germany Each atom of added iron pulled at least 13,000 atoms of carbon out of the atmosphere by encouraging algal growth which, through photosynthesis, captures carbon. In a paper in Nature today, the team reports that much of the captured carbon was transported to the deep ocean, where it will remain sequestered for centuries1 — a 'carbon sink'.
“At least half of the bloom was exported to depths greater than 1,000 metres,” says Victor Smetacek, a marine biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, who led the study...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Gigantic volcanic eruptions out pour gasses of all natures - CO, CO2, methane and a number of others.. I a week of erupting a large volcano can out pour more of these gasses than has been done in all of industrialized human history... So where is the connection to what humans are doing?
Global Warming - if there is such a thing... would more likely be due to slight orbital perturbations of earth in it’s orbit around the Sun, the Sun’s expansion and/or contraction, Sunspots, slight changes in the earth’s tilt on it’s axis... volcanic eruptions or some chance combination of some of these events creating a multiplier effect. As most any thinking person knows - the earth has had numerous Ice Ages... warm - cold - very cold - cold as hell - then warming - ice melts - it is warm again... All done with only a handful of preindustrialized humans around to contribute anything..
Some years back while arguing with a lefty enviro nut ... he made the claim that the American cattle industry of helping to cause Global Warming (massive numbers of Methane cow farts) ... and we should eliminate beef from our diets to help compensate... I pointed out that the huge human populations of China, India, Africa would be doing this too ... massive numbers of human methane farts... He promptly began arguing that this was not part of the problem.... Really Now - not the same thing - WOW!
This is NOT the worst science I have ever read. It’s also not the best. BUT I think it’s worth trying. Here’s why:
Many oceanic ecosystems have just a couple limiting factors, such as oxygen+ sunlight, or iron+ temperature, and so on.
In certain areas of the ocean, which they think they have identified, the limiting factor is iron; ie a key ‘fertilizer’: in other words there’s not enough iron to let phytoplankton grow as fast as they could, all other critical factors being plentiful. In other parts of the ocean it might be temperature, dissolved CO2, pH, etc etc. In another example, the limiting factor for growth in a corn field in Nebraska, in a normal rainfall year, is the LACK of CO2 in the ambient air. (REM: Orchid greenhouses are frequently augmented with CO2 to enhance growth).
The point is that it *DOES* make sense to fertilize the oceans with the missing nutrient. Growing more algae will indeed cause the photosynthetic algae to ‘fix’ CO2 into the ‘bodies’ of the algae, and those will eventually sink to the bottom of the ocean.
BUT!!!
the balancing act is that creating an artificial bloom creates an enhanced demand for OXYGEN as well during the night hours when these additional organisms continue to respire in the dark. THAT causes mass die-offs of other organisms ... i.e., fish kills. This is especially true in aquatic ecosystems.
Still, don’t throw this one out.
FWIW, the same thing could be accomplished by smartly ‘dumping’ municipal black water sewage into the ocean at the right times of the day (NOT night).
Does algae actually consume oxygen or is it bacteria eating an oversupply of dead algae at night causing the problem? This is a problem for fish ponds but does it apply to the deep open ocean? The ocean is highly buffered so it seems hard to believe the oxygen ppm could drop to fish killing levels overnight.
Thanks for the links. I’m not itchy to try geoengineering, but other clowns are thinking about trying to copy volcanos and dump loads of sulfates in the upper atmosphere.
I believe that iron is more valuble than controlling climate change that isn’t caused by man’s CO2 emissions.
Most all aquatic organisms in the photic zone (lit by sunlight) take oxygen IN and put CO2 out - both plant and animal — it’s just that photosynthesizers (green plants/algae) produce more oxygen than they consume during the day (while the sun is bright enough) and consume more CO2 than they respire during the day.
During the night all those organisms take oxygen in and respire (exhale so to speak) CO2. Thus during the night the oxygen levels can drop precipitously, resulting in fish kills in ponds, and potential ‘kills’ in ocean areas, but not if the iron seeding was judicious.
Oceans can be remarkably stratified in terms of temperature, salinity, pH and dissolved gasses. In other words, the water in the first 20 fathoms is very different from the water 21-100 fathoms, and so on. So indeed, an induced ‘bloom’ in the photic zone of 100 square miles of ocean, well-managed, would probably NOT cause a fish kill, because they can move out of the affected area. Might be a different issue for the zooplankton. (animal plankton).
Still this is worth looking at as an experiment.
Having ‘said’ that ... we’d rather not DO this because it reduces AGW. Rather we’d do it to prove a scientific point.
Lastly, the richest fishing grounds in the oceans are in areas of upwelling — where deep sea currents rich in nutrients (dead stuff, call it oceanic compost) come up near the surface into the photic zone and provide fertilizer for algae and zooplankton, which feed krill, which feed small fish, which feed large fish, you get the idea. One could argue the relative merits of fertilizing the ocean in order to create artificial upwellings — and grow more edible fish/shrimp etc. (use black water instead of iron)
70% of the earth’s surface is ocean. They could dump into the ocean, all the existing iron stock we have in the world, and it wouldn’t reduce algae measurably. Think about it. 167 square KM required several tons of iron. Several million tons would be a drop in the ocean.
These people are insane. But anybody insane enough to think algae needs killing is insane enough to think they could manufacture enough steel to even notice a difference.
Insane asses.
Because the iron compound is nothing but a nutrient, there is nothing about this process that can run away. The worst thing that can happen is that it doesn’t work.
It's at the end of a long process that starts with coal.
What kind of self-hating moron would try to sequester or eliminate carbon, an element critical for life (what is unclear about “carbon-based lifeforms”?)?
Secondly, these environmentalists are watermelons - green on the outside, red in the middle. They care less about the earth than about convincing people to surrender to their globalist vision.
Thirdly, carbon tax schemes are not about reducing carbon, which is nigh impossible; rather it is to secure a funding steam for leftist utopian schemes.
YMMV
What kind of self-hating moron would try to sequester or eliminate carbon, an element critical for life (what is unclear about “carbon-based lifeforms”?)?
Secondly, these environmentalists are watermelons - green on the outside, red in the middle. They care less about the earth than about convincing people to surrender to their globalist vision.
Thirdly, carbon tax schemes are not about reducing carbon, which is nigh impossible; rather it is to secure a funding stream for leftist utopian schemes.
YMMV
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.