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 10:53 am
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Diatoms: Flip Nicklin/Getty Images
On land, storing and mitigating atmospheric carbon is already big business. In Europe, any corporation that emits an excess of CO2 has to pay about $30 a ton for it on the European Union's carbon market, the world's largest. That market doesn't allow credits from carbon-sequestering projects known as "sinks" (at least not yet; the value and trustworthiness of all such efforts is the subject of heated debate). But the credits can be sold on voluntary exchanges, or directly to consumers and businesses that want to reduce their carbon footprint.
These kinds of voluntary efforts have already made trees grown to sequester carbon into a fast-expanding business, as George knows well. The Planktos CEO was also a founder of KlimaFa, a company that plans to suck up carbon by growing forests in a national park in Hungary. KlimaFa made international headlines last summer with a donation of carbon credits to the Vatican that, George claimed, would cancel out all of the papal state's 2007 emissions (despite the fact that no trees have been planted yet). The move was marketing genius: Even without the full blessing of the scientific community, George could now claim to be doing God's work.
John Martin, the father of iron seeding, was an immensely experienced and respected ocean researcher. Yet a number of scientists were concerned by the possible ecological side effects of the "Geritol solution," as it was sometimes called, even when Martin was its biggest champion. Russ George, in contrast, is a businessman with no advanced degree. His past ventures have ranged from documentary film production to a company that peddles home-based cold-fusion machines. When he suddenly became iron seeding's most visible proponent, many scientists were repelled.
George had the opportunity to win them over last fall when Buesseler organized a conference at Woods Hole. Its goal was to allow leading scientists to address the questions surrounding commercial iron seeding in a forum with environmentalists, government officials and representatives of the fledgling for-profit companies. George was invited to sit on a panel at the event, but at the last minute he decided to attend a New York panel convened by the more investor-friendly TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference instead, where he told attendees that if they rejected solutions to global warming, the planet would "reboot, and give us the blue screen of death."
Nevertheless, soon after the Woods Hole conference, Planktos issued a press release that implied that the scientific community was united in their support of its mission. "Planktos Corp. (OCTBB:PLKT) is announcing on Thursday Oct. 4, 2007, that scientists met at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) and agree ocean iron fertilization projects should proceed to define the role of ocean plankton eco-restoration as an effective tool to slow climate change," the release began. "Russ George chose not to show up and give his talk," Buesseler says. "Instead he wrote a spin PR piece at the end that really had nothing to do with what happened at the meeting." (George eventually showed up on the last day of the conference.)
Although a handful of well-known scientists do believe that iron seeding could both sequester carbon and have beneficial side effects, such as increasing fish populations and improving the food stock for endangered whales, many more have serious reservations about the idea. In the January 11, 2008, issue of the journal Science, 16 of the field's top experts, including a colleague of Martin's who had been involved in running his posthumous experiments, summarized what Buesseler says was the consensus at the Woods Hole conference: "It is premature to sell carbon offsets from ocean iron fertilization unless there is better demonstration that [it] effectively removes CO2, retains that carbon in the ocean for a quantifiable amount of time, and has acceptable and predictable environmental impacts," the article concluded. In other words, iron seeding is still more hope than fact.
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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!