I’ll have to find my notes on the ocean-seeding hypothesis. I had the chance to attend a discussion earlier this year on the ongoing experiment to dump vast quantities of iron into the ocean. As it turns out, iron is the crucial limiting nutrient for phytoplankton. Add iron and you get dramatic increases in photosynthesis that amounts to sucking carbon dioxide out of the air. The thought is that this carbon dioxide will be sequestered deeply in the ocean (and this is where my memory gets hazy). Somehow the CO2 won’t make it back into the atmosphere, at least for a long time. The scientist involved in the discussion couldn’t answer the big question, which is what happens to oceanic ecosystems when you modify nutrient availability on this kind of scale.

I guess I would answer your question with an analogy: imagine you’re in a bathtub and you can’t turn the faucet off. You could come up with all kinds of ways to get rid of the water, like scooping it out, trying to evaporate it with a portable heater, drinking it, etc, but all with consequence that aren’t always clear from the outset (ie floor of the bathroom gets wet, you get sick from drinking bathwater, etc). If the problem is really so important, why not slow the faucet. All the ‘solutions’ to keep the bathtub from overflowing are useless without doing this, anyway.

But that’s just my thinking. Any additional input on this would be appreciated…

I’ll have to find my notes on the ocean-seeding hypothesis. I had the chance to attend a discussion earlier this year on the ongoing experiment to dump vast quantities of iron into the ocean. As it turns out, iron is the crucial limiting nutrient for phytoplankton. Add iron and you get dramatic increases in photosynthesis that amounts to sucking carbon dioxide out of the air. The thought is that this carbon dioxide will be sequestered deeply in the ocean (and this is where my memory gets hazy). Somehow the CO2 won’t make it back into the atmosphere, at least for a long time. The scientist involved in the discussion couldn’t answer the big question, which is what happens to oceanic ecosystems when you modify nutrient availability on this kind of scale.

I guess I would answer your question with an analogy: imagine you’re in a bathtub and you can’t turn the faucet off. You could come up with all kinds of ways to get rid of the water, like scooping it out, trying to evaporate it with a portable heater, drinking it, etc, but all with consequence that aren’t always clear from the outset (ie floor of the bathroom gets wet, you get sick from drinking bathwater, etc). If the problem is really so important, why not slow the faucet. All the ‘solutions’ to keep the bathtub from overflowing are useless without doing this, anyway.

But that’s just my thinking. Any additional input on this would be appreciated…

I’ll have to find my notes on the ocean-seeding hypothesis. I had the chance to attend a discussion earlier this year on the ongoing experiment to dump vast quantities of iron into the ocean. As it turns out, iron is the crucial limiting nutrient for phytoplankton. Add iron and you get dramatic increases in photosynthesis that amounts to sucking carbon dioxide out of the air. The thought is that this carbon dioxide will be sequestered deeply in the ocean (and this is where my memory gets hazy). Somehow the CO2 won’t make it back into the atmosphere, at least for a long time. The scientist involved in the discussion couldn’t answer the big question, which is what happens to oceanic ecosystems when you modify nutrient availability on this kind of scale.

I guess I would answer your question with an analogy: imagine you’re in a bathtub and you can’t turn the faucet off. You could come up with all kinds of ways to get rid of the water, like scooping it out, trying to evaporate it with a portable heater, drinking it, etc, but all with consequence that aren’t always clear from the outset (ie floor of the bathroom gets wet, you get sick from drinking bathwater, etc). If the problem is really so important, why not slow the faucet. All the ‘solutions’ to keep the bathtub from overflowing are useless without doing this, anyway.

But that’s just my thinking. Any additional input on this would be appreciated…

-Back in WWII, the government subsidized the growing of corn. Okay, that’s fine. We needed more food.

-After WWII, the subsidies didn’t stop. Agribusinesses such as ADM, ConAgra, and Monsanto began to gain power and have been lobbying the government for decades to keep the subsidies coming.

-Small farms get bought up by agribusinesse and agribusinesses grow the crops they know will get subsidized. On a VAST SCALE.

-Inevitably, there is a surplus of corn. What to do with it? Spend millions of dollars on research to convert this extra corn into something else – e.g. high fructose corn syrup and, most recently, ethanol.

-Corn is NOT the most efficient ethanol crop. By any means.

-Ethanol production from corn *creates* more pollution than its use will mitigate!

-The passage of the ethanol bill and the carbon sequestration funding indicate that the government is continuing its diseased partnership with agribusinesses.

… Sorry for the rant.

Happy Holidays.