SteveK
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- Name: SteveK
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Another issue
If you look at the history of iron fertilization, you find out that from the very start, before anybody knew anything, before there were any facts whatsoever, there were a good number of people expressing their "rage" (if I may paraphrase one of the posters above) about this idea.
The people hostile to this technology aren't feeling rage because they have hard facts...they don't. They are feeling rage because they are politically opposed to solutions of this sort. They will cook up all kinds of objections, invent or inflate risks, whatever it takes, to block Planktos, or anybody who does does this research. The argument here is political and ideological, not scientific.
The reality is, what Planktos is planning to do is utterly safe. "Local damage"? Baloney. Mother earth routinely "dumps" megatons of iron on the ocean, every year, in the form of iron oxide dust and river run-off. Mother earth has been doing this for billions of years.
If Planktos was planning hundreds of thousands of square miles, or millions of tons of iron, then that might be consequential. If they had a supertanker full of iron, that might be consequential. But they don't have any of that. What they have is a rather small research vessel and a multi-year plan. Perfectly reasonable science.
Here's my prediction, to match Gar's. After much ranting and raving by the hysterical uninformed masses, eventually cooler heads will prevail. The great majority of scientists, who are quietly interested in this work, will join in and support the Planktos research, happily collecting data that is paid by private money.
Despite all the predictions of doom, every study of the Planktos blooms will show, in fact, that side-effects are completely inconsequential. The little beasties will eat up all that iron without even a hiccup, just as they have been for millenia.
If Planktos can prove that they have sequestered NET carbon, then they will be able to sell some portion of their carbon credits, slowly, to a few buyers. If they can't prove net sequestration, they won't be able to sell diddly, and will disappear, losing their shirts.
That's my prediction.
All of this will carry a good lesson for the climate change community as a whole: Don't waste so much time having screaming matches about proposed solutions before you've even seen any facts. If somebody had a great idea and they are willing to put up their own money, well them let try it. It's called innovation, folks. That's how we're going to solve our global crisis. On Planktos may be a bad idea, but innovation is good posted 2 years, 6 months ago 15 Responses
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Wrong again
Yes, let's look at what they say.
They say it's unproven. I agree.
They say it's speculative. Right again.
They say there are risks of unknown side effects. Yes of course. Anything new has risks. The goal of research is to uncover and understand those risks.
Where do they say they "don't approve?" I don't see that. What they say is that it's unproven. Which would imply that someone should do the research to prove or disprove it.
Which is exactly what Planktos proposes to do. More research, in this case, funded by carbon credits. A rather clever way to fund scientific work.
And yes, the majority of ocean scientists do support more research, once it is presented to them without the emotional and political baggage that so many people want to throw on it. On And why wouldn't they? posted 2 years, 6 months ago 6 Responses
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Debates = waste of time
In my view, the debates proposed by ETC aren't practical. They'd immediately turn into a ideological or political squabble between those parties, like ETC, who don't approve of iron fertilization on principle and the other side, Planktos or whoever, who do believe in such measures.
There would be little or no scientific value, and no valid or factual conclusions worth speaking of. The net result it to make the public even more suspicious that global warming advocates aren't interested in real solutions, but just trying to cram their personal agendas down everybody's throats. We have enough of that kind of suspicion already.
Note that this kind of ideological squabbling, which is so poisonous to the free flow of scientific knowledge, as been rampant in the iron fertilization field (see my Open Letter to the Marine Science Community, an expose of the infighting in the area of iron fertilization).
A better approach would be to let Planktos do their study, but make sure that they are including reputable, independant outside marine scientists in the process. On Putting iron in the ocean posted 2 years, 6 months ago 47 Responses
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Don't agree
Having spent on a lot of time discussing this topic in a series of blog articles, I'd have to disagree with your point. The majority of scientists don't disagree with this idea. There have been a lot people doing studies just like Planktos.
However, there are some scientists who are ideologically or politically opposed to iron fertilization science, and have been working over time in the past 15 years to try to block any and all study of the subject. This was a topic that we did a long expose about last year...the attempts by some scientists to retard the progress of this science.
And yes, the nice folks at RealClimate.org are very negative. I'm sorry to see that, because that kind of negativity is exactly what the climate change community doesn't need, if it wants to convince the public that it's serious about encouraging innovation.
In reality, most qualified scientists who I've talked to agree that this is potentially scientifically important work. Thus my position still is:
Let Planktos do their study, but watch them carefully and ensure that the work is done in a scientifically valid, ecologically cautious, transparent way.
These are the standards that we apply to most if not all other ecological work, commercial or not, and these standards work well. There is no reason to do otherwise.On And why wouldn't they? posted 2 years, 6 months ago 6 Responses
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Might work
As a practicing ecologist who has been watching the whole iron-plankton thing for a few years, I'm cautiously optimistic about the Planktos plan. They seem to doing a couple things right:
- They're starting on a small scale (for those of you who don't know this, 10,000 sq km is small by oceananic standards, and by the standards of this type of experiment.)
- They're collecting data for several years...a good long time. Very important to understand the underlying processes.
Personally I plan to support Planktos in their work but also watch them very, very carefully to make sure they keep their noses clean. I'd invite other thoughtful greens and eco-citizens to do the same.On Putting iron in the ocean posted 2 years, 6 months ago 47 Responses
- They're starting on a small scale (for those of you who don't know this, 10,000 sq km is small by oceananic standards, and by the standards of this type of experiment.)