Russ George knew how to fight global warming: Grow rainforests' worth of plantlife in the open ocean, plantlife that would suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. He had the boat, the money and the team to make it happen. Everything was going according to plan—that is, until the environmentalists mobilized
Posted 07.01.2008 at 11:53 am
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Weatherbird II
Jay Paul
When the Weatherbird II cruised up the Potomac River and into the nation's capitol in March of last year, spirits were high. The freshly painted 115-foot research vessel was about to set sail for what would be the world's first for-profit effort to "fertilize" the ocean with iron, growing a vast forest of marine plant life that would pull the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The lap through Washington was an effort to drum up support for the voyage to the iron-deficient waters west of the Galápagos Islands.
The Weatherbird's captain was former Greenpeace officer Peter Willcox, a man who had devoted more than 20 years of his life to protesting illegal fishing and nuclear testing at the helm of Greenpeace's flagship vessel, the Rainbow Warrior. The crew was made up of earnest young environmentalists and scientists, some just a few years out of college. And the project was led by San Francisco businessman Russ George, a former fisheries and forestry worker who had himself once stood night watch on the Rainbow Warrior in his native Canada.
George had been studying the science behind oceanic iron seeding, as the fertilization practice is called, for a decade. Early last year, with the help of private investors, he had transitioned his small nonprofit research organization into Planktos Corp., a for-profit company with shares trading on the penny stock exchange known as the over-the-counter bulletin board. His business plan was simple: Sell the carbon that the plankton sequesters to individuals and businesses that want or need to lower their net carbon emissions. (In Europe, regulations compel businesses to lower their carbon output. The U.S. market is voluntary, at least for now.)
By early summer, George told a gathering at the Washington Press Club, the recently purchased Weatherbird would cross the Caribbean, pass through the Panama Canal, and head out into the Pacific, where the first of six planned iron-seeding trips would begin. The crew would scatter iron particles over a swath of ocean more than twice the size of Rhode Island. Then they would wait three weeks for the blooms of plant life to grow. Dispatches from the trip would be posted on the company's Web site, where Planktos was already selling carbon credits for $5 a ton. Their first expedition, George later said, was intended to be a critical first step toward halting global warming, a cheap and simple way to let the ocean do the hard work of cleaning up the planet, and to make some money along the way.
But as any ecologist knows, fiddling with complex systems can have unforeseen consequences. Rather than applauding Planktos's self-declared Voyage of Recovery, a chorus of environmentalists, tacitly backed by more than a few government officials and scientists, soon began an aggressive campaign against the company. Their concerns were both philosophical (should we intentionally change the Earth?) and practical (how do we know it will work out as promised?), and in their fight they established the initial front in the battles to come over geo-engineering, or large-scale modification of the planet.
And then there's the money. Planktos and its founders were driven by a seemingly genuine desire to heal the Earth as well as a profit motive. But in the future, a sense of virtue may not always be part of the eco-entrepreneurial package. In the Wild West economy of carbon markets, where the stakes are high and laws have yet to take hold, who gets to decide what is right? If the free market farms out the job of saving the planet to the lowest bidder, how do we ensure that the Earth doesn't get harmed in the process?
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Sounds like the guy deserves a chance. It's doubtful that this small scale experiment will have much effect one way or the other. Seems as if it's worth a try.
As for the noble words that we don't want a 'quick fix' -- well, sometimes science is the answer. Reducing the effects of pollution is as valid as reducing pollution activity.
It's pretty sad that someone's trying to actually DO something about the problem of climate change, and these eco-terrorists who think they know better have to sabotage the effort. Couldn't the Planktos seeding have been treated as an experiment? Let them do their thing and closely watch the results? Data gathered would have validated the technique and calibrated the results for Carbon offset.
An even worse thing is that anyone with a Climate Change solution will now think twice before attempting anything.
While long-term fixes and structural changes are a good thing, quick fixes and band-aids have their place too. We have to fight Climate Change and the energy crisis on all fronts. Every little bit helps.
I live about 3 meters above sea level, and I take every solution, band aid or not, very seriously indeed.
It's pretty sad that someone's trying to actually DO something about the problem of climate change, and these eco-terrorists who think they know better have to sabotage the effort. Couldn't the Planktos seeding have been treated as an experiment? Let them do their thing and closely watch the results? Data gathered would have validated the technique and calibrated the results for Carbon offset.
An even worse thing is that anyone with a Climate Change solution will now think twice before attempting anything.
While long-term fixes and structural changes are a good thing, quick fixes and band-aids have their place too. We have to fight Climate Change and the energy crisis on all fronts. Every little bit helps.
I live about 3 meters above sea level, and I take every solution, band aid or not, very seriously indeed.
As someone who was involved in the Planktos project, I am still surprised by how many people focused on the “profit motive”, which seemed to be main objection of the environmentalists. Profit was never the main goal of Planktos. The goal was to research the huge potential benefit of iron fertilization to help restore the health of the oceans.
The reason Planktos was organized as a for-profit business was it was otherwise impossible to get funding to do the work. Keep in mind, before Planktos and the huge amount of publicity it generated, there was little or no public awareness of iron fertilization as a technique and very limited funding for the ocean science community to study the field.
Above all we need to remember that the oceans are in a very bad state, and getting worse, due to enormous human pressures. There is no political willpower to stop this human impact. Overfishing and pollution will continue. Therefore we need techniques to help restore the health of the oceans…and iron fertilization is our best thing we have so far. It needs to be researched, understood, and developed fully.
For those interested in the continuing saga of Planktos and the quest for ecorestoration of seas and trees you might find the new Planktos-Science (dot) com web pages of interest.
Ecorestoration of our seas has never been more critically important. If we help Mother Ocean she will absolve, as opposed to dissolve, our sins of emission.
Pico
There's still no replacement for cutting CO2 altogether.
Scottar
As physicists and weathermen know, oceans are not heated due to air temperature, It's the reverse. Air temperatures are heating from the ocean's temperature, after all, it's what drives hurricanes and tropical storms.
So what's heating the oceans? It's not CO2! So what is causing global warming-uh, oh, excu'se me, it's now- 'climate change'.
What are they going to call it next, Gore's folly?
jnsmith So if he had gone and got a grant for $10,000,000 From These People That Were Protesting And Shuting him down! He would be in the Ocean now seeding it down with thier blessing. Right!
It's just nut jobs fighting nut jobs. Move along folks. Nothing to see here.