Saturday January 17, 2009, 9:00 pm
Many seek to "geo-engineer" a global solution to climate change; that is, modify the Earth's biosphere at a planetary scale. Is humanity so resistant to change that we will seek to construct a "Frankensphere", with dramatic unknown consequences, rather than reducing emissions, consumption and population?

A rogue science ship is poised to carry out risky experimental fertilization of the Southern Ocean. This is likely the first of many coming attempts to begin "geo-engineering" [search] the biosphere as a solution to climate change. RV Polarstern, a German research ship, is to dump twenty tons of iron sulphate over 300 square kilometres of the Scotia Sea, off Chile's coast, near the Antarctic Peninsula. The chemical cargo -- normally used to treat lawns and sewage -- is likely to provoke a massive algal bloom big enough to be seen from outer space. German and Indian scientists are hoping the experiment will show that such manmade algae blooms can provide a quick fix to climate change by absorbing carbon into the sea. Please write to the German government demanding that the RV Polarstern turn around and return to port. Insist that Germany agree to a permanent ban on large-scale geo-engineering experiments and implementation, until all other options are exhausted, and until global geo-engineering protocols are in place. TAKE ACTION!

Sunday January 18, 2009, 2:05 am
Sounds like an interesting experiment
I wish them well.

Sunday January 18, 2009, 12:36 pm
I took action. We need to stop playing God and start taking care of his creation.

Monday January 19, 2009, 7:58 am
signed, thx Marieemma

Monday January 19, 2009, 3:18 pm
Unbelievable!!What ego humans have! It's not nice to fool Mother Nature!!! will sign

Tuesday January 20, 2009, 4:00 am

If You Mean Well, Are You Allowed To Screw Up The Ocean?

In the good old days, when I lived in Florida, if you had a completely ridiculous idea but convinced someone else who had some authority, you could get it done. It didn't have to be a great idea, if it went bad you could just make it go away.

But in the Internet Age, every dumb thing you do is permanent, so we can laugh at the idea of using 2 million tires to make an artificial coral reef today but in the Florida of my youth, this made complete sense to environmentalists - and they found science data to back it up. The clean up would be left to future generations.

'Future generations' are used by both side of the global warming debate. Alarmists say there won't be a world left if we don't do something now while Denialists say that future science will easily solve any problems we create. It's odd logic. Skeptics of global warming tend to be conservative and insist kids today are much dumber due to the influence of the liberal agenda in universities so why they think those dumb kids will fix the planet in the future is beyond me. Meanwhile, many proponents of global warming make statistical mistakes that second year undergraduate students ridicule so why we should believe that huge snowstorms are caused by global warming is a mystery.

Like those tires sitting in big piles, the activists behind it created a sense of urgency, only the issue then was that we were running out of landfill space. What well-meaning activists were not asking is, "Are we solving an actual problem?" If Republicans were against it, it must be a real issue, just like with global warming. But it turned out they were solving a problem we actually didn't have. Landfill doomsday scenarios went out with pet rocks though for a time everyone was convinced we would have our houses filled with garbage.

This is why a ship named the Polarstern left Cape Town, South Africa a few days with 50 scientists and 20 tons of iron sulphate. The word 'theory' is used too colloquially these days so I won't say they have a theory - it's more like a wild guess - but they think if they dump a lot of iron sulphate in the ocean, it will create an algal bloom and suck a lot of evil carbon down into the bottom of the ocean.

How much carbon? A billion tons of carbon per year if applied across the Southern Ocean, some say. In true "Austin Powers" Dr. Evil fashion, they seem to have kept coming up with higher numbers until it sounded impressive.

I'm not an activist or a geologist or an oceanographer so I have this crazy notion that the environment is actually a complex system and that doing one thing to mitigate one problem might not be a great idea if it leads to 10 more problems. Dumping a lot of iron sulphate would seem to be worth considering in more detail - no "we only have 10 years" or we're doomed hysteria but instead actual data. Yet there are two things working against us.

First, we have well meaning activist scientists who have found a loophole in international law and are disregarding the wishes of 191 signators to the United Nation's Convention on Biological Diversity that put a moratorium on widespread experimentation with the ocean precisely so this could not happen. Second, we have a 'carbon sequestration' industry that desperately needs there to be a CO2-caused global warming problem, else they have spent a lot of money on lobbyists and not solved anything.

I have no issue at all with private industry solving problems, of course. And a school with an agenda has no problem at all looking for loopholes, namely the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven, Germany.

AWI says they are on our side. Their work will help distinguish legitimate, necessary science that can only get done by dumping iron sulphate in 300 square KM of ocean (their research, naturally) from quack people out to make a buck (other groups obeying the moratorium) which is all well and good. Obviously I am not against science experimentation.

But are they solving the right problem? Pollution has gone up but global warming has not matched the rise in CO2 levels. Like those tires in the ocean 3 decades ago, before we rush to implement a solution that may not work, let's take time and make sure we are solving a problem we really have.

http://www.scientificblogging.com/science_20/blog/lohafex_if_you_mean_well_are_you_allowed_screw_ocean

Tuesday January 20, 2009, 11:54 pm
Noted and action taken, thank you.

Wednesday January 21, 2009, 10:18 pm
Noted, and action taken, mercy buckets, Mariemma!

Friday January 23, 2009, 10:47 pm
Many seek to "geo-engineer" a global solution to climate change; that is, modify the Earth's biosphere at a planetary scale. Is humanity so resistant to change that we will seek to construct a "Frankensphere", with dramatic unknown consequences, rather than reducing emissions, consumption and population?

Noted Sadly, thanks Mareemma

Friday January 23, 2009, 10:48 pm
And Petition Signed most emphatically!