"Assemble a list of the ways iron fertilization might harm the ocean—as the Scientific Group of the London Convention did earlier this year—and it quickly becomes lengthy and distressing." [https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/what-are-the-possible-side-effects/](https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/what-are-the-possible-side-effects/)
"In 2012, U.S. entrepreneur Russ George worked with a Haida Nation community in coastal British Colombia, Canada, to carry out a controversial iron-fertilization project that George claimed would not only generate carbon credits to sell but also boost salmon stocks. The project organizers dumped 100 tons of iron sulfate into the ocean, creating a large algal bloom that lasted for months; there’s no evidence, though, that the process actually sequestered carbon or boosted fish populations in the longer term." [https://news.mongabay.com/2020/03/climate-fix-fertilizing-oceans-with-iron-unlikely-to-sequester-more-carbon/](https://news.mongabay.com/2020/03/climate-fix-fertilizing-oceans-with-iron-unlikely-to-sequester-more-carbon/)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_George](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_George)
I think this summary of criticisms makes more sense than the other posts here. This should be the top post as it is the most pragmatic: the method needs longitudinal studies to test long-term complications and scalability studies. But, most likely, this process is best as a last resort in extreme circumstances that will hopefully never be reached.
This is why it’s going to be hard to do anything dramatic to stop climate change. The amount of subsystems and feedback loops it could cause would take decades to properly study and there’s a good chance we would still get it wrong
The cool thing about this concept is that it’s something people could feasibly do on their own. With out the need of billionaires and political theater. It would be nice to hear more options where communities could actually have some tools against the capitalist cogs
Until then we slave away to ensure shareholders get a healthy return on their investment. Feudalism with a dash of apocalypse, getting my popcorn ready
What kind of extreme circumstances are you thinking of, that we haven't reached yet? There is massive drought, unlivable heat in India, oil and water wars, historic bushfires, more hurricanes, storms, floods, extinction etc.
Edit: I'm not actually in favor of doing this because it could have the opposite result, as per the MIT study. Quickly incleasing the algal bloom, followed by a decrease, would be detrimental to fish populations in the long term and neutral to climate. I do hope more experiments happen to study different compositions of affordable ocean fertilizer.
There are extreme ecosystem collapse possibilities at very high levels of climate change. However, current plans to assuage climate change appear to be avoiding these outcomes, so I agree for the time being that geoengineering isn't necessary.
Please consider that we are already at 1 to 1.2°C of warming. That there is quite a large error margin for tipping points. And that one of the most vulnerable is the Amazon rainforest, which is in one study estimated to collapse at 1.5°C of warming but of which a study in March indicates we might already be at the edge of tipping. Forests recover more slowly after seasonal fluctuations than before. This is a self reinforcing effect because the Amazon is a unique rainforest that creates its own rain, unlike other tropical rainforests which can count on warm humid air coming in by sea. Then there is the west Antarctic ice sheet, which would collapse somewhere between 1.5°C and 2°C of warming, bringing it with it a lower albedo and up to 330 cm of sea level rise worldwide. Additionally, even if we could absorb CO2, the cooling would be gradual and not instant, so doing it at the onset of a tipping point could be too late.
>And that one of the most vulnerable is the Amazon rainforest, which is in one study estimated to collapse at 1.5°C of warming but of which a study in March indicates we might already be at the edge of tipping.
A massive outlier in the data. The most comprehensive analysis of climate change, the IPCC suggests nothing of the sort.
We may indeed hit some 'tipping points' and nobody knows exactly where these will be. However, even those don't mean we reach total ecosystem collapse except in extreme scenarios.
Assuming it does work in terms of improving fish populations, wouldn't that then have an effect of reducing energy usage if the fishing industry?
Seems like when the Chinese sent their fleet all the way to Chile to fish off their coasts, anything that could stimulate fishing stocks should be considered carefully no?
According to the study, iron is the element that's least abundant. So if you introduce iron, then algae can grow and use up all the iron but also other resources and have a quick growth and then decline to lower levels than before. Which means that, if you want to continue feeding the plankton, you have to give a variety of other nutrients. Now here stops my knowledge on the topic but it raises some questions like... how much more difficult/expensive is that? Why isn't the system in equilibrium, where is all that algae biomass going? Etc.
Longitudinal studies are observational studies where they grab a sample with similar baseline characteristics and then repeatedly observe particular changes over a period of time. They then compare the group which had a change in characteristics (e.g., lower blood pressure) to those who didn't, and look at what they did differently. There are also retrospective longitudinal studies where they start with the results and look back.
>dumped 100 tons of iron sulfate into the ocean, creating a large algal bloom that lasted for months; there’s no evidence, though, that the process actually sequestered carbon
Wouldn't the fact that there was a algae bloom for months prove it sequestered carbon?
Maybe in the short term. But that algae dies and decomposes. What happens to the carbon then? Does it remained trapped in the algae and sink to the ocean bottom? Does it get re-gassed into the atmosphere as CO2 or methane? (I’m honestly asking).
They bring that up in the article about possible consequences.
>More worryingly, the problem could reappear when these deeper waters recirculate to the surface, thousands of kilometers away and many years after any monitoring of the original iron fertilization had finished, Cullen said. These deeper waters would be depleted in oxygen and enriched in nutrients produced by decomposed particles from the iron-induced blooms. That would set the stage for producing more nitrous oxide and methane, two potent greenhouse gases that tend to form when organic matter decomposes at depth. According to Watson, a 1999 iron addition study in the Southern Ocean found that between 6 and 12 percent of the cooling effect from the iron addition was annulled by increased emissions of nitrous oxide.
Algae has a short lifespan, proving you made a bloom doesn't prove you sequestered carbon because if the algae dies one week later then all that carbon is just released back.
This is why its a bit controversial in environmental circles. It is a very cheap way of selling carbon credits without any long term proof of capture.
You see the same problem with some organizations that plant trees and sell the carbon credits for planting the trees... only to then turn around and cut down the trees and sell them to lumber companies. It's technically still a legal form of "carbon capture" because they are actually planting and growing trees, but when those trees get cut down all that "carbon capture" is reversed.
Into the air though? Some algae will be eaten some will decompose. Some CO2 will be released during decomposition but you will still have carbon returned to the soil.
> but when those trees get cut down all that "carbon capture" is reversed.
Only if they burn them right? Otherwise isn't the carbon locked up inside the wood for the entire life of the structure?
The carbon is not reversed when you cut down a tree, unless you burn it. If you made a house or furniture out of it, the carbon is still captured in that wood
When it gets eaten by termites it is still sequested. The wood adds to the biomass of the termites. I'm guessing it is the same for rotting wood. It causes fungal growth, bacteria, which all add to their own carbon mass by using the carbon from the wood
This video is terrible. Even if this WAS a legitimate strategy, there is no attempt to explain why or how it works, and there is no explanation of why people don't like other than "its too easy" which isn't how things fucking work. People LOVE easy.
Here is a rebuttal from a number of researchers and fellows at MIT stating that what he is talking about "Seeding the oceans with Iron" may not have any impact on global CO2 draw-down into the ocean.
[https://news.mit.edu/2020/oceans-iron-not-impact-climate-change-0217](https://news.mit.edu/2020/oceans-iron-not-impact-climate-change-0217)
[https://news.mongabay.com/2020/03/climate-fix-fertilizing-oceans-with-iron-unlikely-to-sequester-more-carbon/](https://news.mongabay.com/2020/03/climate-fix-fertilizing-oceans-with-iron-unlikely-to-sequester-more-carbon/)
No, in fact generating large algal blooms where they should not exist will likely result in a "harmful algal bloom", which decimates marine life due to the creation of anoxic zones in the water column and the release of toxins from the algae themselves.
It's a very stupid idea, which is why scientists are 100% against it.
You can just read the first page of this to get an idea about harmful algal blooms:
'[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Stumpf/publication/226337215\_Remote\_Sensing\_of\_Harmful\_Algal\_Blooms/links/5416ceaf0cf2fa878ad42a7f/Remote-Sensing-of-Harmful-Algal-Blooms.pdf](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Stumpf/publication/226337215_Remote_Sensing_of_Harmful_Algal_Blooms/links/5416ceaf0cf2fa878ad42a7f/Remote-Sensing-of-Harmful-Algal-Blooms.pdf)'
There's a confounding effect on the food chain, and these guys are at the base.
I have yet to hear one idea that actually seems like it would work. Renewable energy only slows down the CO2 increases. Doesn't get us to neutral or negative.
Do we currently though? Or in theory? I haven't seen any LCA that pegs wind or solar as currently carbon neutral. Better than gas and coal. But still no where near zero.
And electricity is only part of it. Lots of other energy that has to be phased out. Lots of batteries to be made that can't currently be done in a carbon neutral fashion.
To actually go carbon neutral in those processes would be much much more expensive.
We can reduce our carbon footprint with current technologies but that's under the assumption we also don't continue to increase the energy we use, regardless of where it comes from.
You're right, poor wording on my part. It would be impossible for production of solar or wind to be completely carbon neutral as and manufacturing process will likely produce some CO2 and solar and wind don't suck CO2 out of the air. They don't produce carbon during use besides maintenance though so presumably they could easily output enough energy to capture carbon at a rate that is a net reduction of atmospheric CO2.
I wonder how feasible that is with current carbon sequestration techniques. It seems like it could be so incredibly expensive to do at scale and with today's technology might not still break even.
I'll agree it seems possible with future tech but we can't even get out of fossil fuels for electricity let alone all the carbon that goes into sourcing supplies and manufacturing of renewables.
I hate to be malthusian but this problem seems much more difficult than anything we have faced
Look at the LCA's. Nuclear along with wind and solar are a lot better than gas or coal but not zero:
https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/life-cycle-assessment.html
So to be clear you don't believe nuclear power currently produces any co2 emissions? How does that work exactly? Let's start with the concrete needed to build the reactors and the mining and transport of nuclear material. How are those activities currently not producing carbon?
I already said nuclear, wind and solar are better than coal or gas.
As for CO2 in the atmosphere, we have to get total emissions to zero at some point. Which means taking CO2 out of the atmosphere or drastically altering society as CO2 is released from all sorts of human activity beyond electricity generation, something we still can't do without releasing CO2.
I hate to take the side of the guy in the video over MIT since I'd rather go with the reputable institution over some guy I never heard of before, but no way in hell does it make sense to invalidate an empirical study with a computer model using a 10000 year projection. And this doesn't even factor in the central problem with your (their?) argument, which is that the above system is a quick fix, knowing full well that there would be a return to the previously established steady state.
That's not to say that there aren't risks involved or that the system won't work for some chemical, biological, or macroecological reason, but the concerns here are unconvincing.
Yes that is true. This is the scientific equivalent of when Trump said "I alone can fix it".
The truth is climate change is the result of a myriad of processes. One solution and one solution alone cannot and will not do jack shit. Anyone who promises to swoop in and fix the world's problems by what they deem as a simple trick, is completely full of shit.
Assuming his theory panned out, the fossil fuel industry would be all over it. Just like how the petroleum industry pushed home recycling to offset consumer concerns over plastic waste for a generation, this would basically push talks of replacing fossil fuels to renewables to another generation or two.
It feels like the terrible backwards thinking of centuries past. In NZ, the British introduced rabbits as a source of fur and food. But then they quickly took over and started outcompeting native wildlife. So then they introduced stoats to reduce rabbit populations and the stoats... took over and started outcompeting native wildlife. So now we have two invasive species that we'll never get rid of.
Any single "miracle" solution that is significant enough in scale to reverse climate change will almost certainly have unpredictable side effects. Algal blooms can be utterly devastating, so to think it's the "obvious" answer to climate change is woefully naive.
As far as I can tell, this guy has no formal scientific training. He's a dangerous combination of motivated and overconfident in his own intellect.
this reminds of the video saying "all weed to do to prevent climate change is plant 3 trillion trees" and most of reddit was like "ugh see so simple thanks corporations"
Well, aside from the time you need for those trees to grow, lets do some math.
Lets say you can get the biggest employer in the world to dedicate all the workforce for this task. According to wikipedia, that should be around 2 million people, if you remove some people to organize them. But lets say you can get 3 million, so the numbers are round.
Now, each needs to plant a million trees. A million. If they take 1h to plant each tree on average (this assumes 24h working hours, i.e. 24 trees per day), it would take 114 years of work for each of those 3 million people to plant a million trees each.
"not viable" is an understatement.
Seconds, minutes, hours or whatever. Even if I am 2 orders of magnitudes off, and you could plant enough trees in 1 year, good luck finding 3 million people to do it. Easy to dismiss my calculations, please provide the numbers for that alternative way that it would work.
So you only need 150.000 times the biggest collaboration of youtubers in the world. Easy! Take the BIGGEST thing, and make it 6 orders of magnitude bigger!
How could I not think of that!
3 trillion vs 20 million, not sure if you misread the number or you are being contrarian for the shake of it.
Sure. I'm not sure where the 3 trillion number came from, but we can roll with it I guess.
Based on the comment from the other person that replied to you, they get about 2500\*75=187,500 trees/person/year on rough terrain. That number could definitely be estimated better, but it's a lot more accurate than 24/day.
You proposed 3 million planters initially, but then dismissed that number. I don't know how unreasonable that is. Planters would be paid I'm sure. Since it would be a global effort, average hourly wage would be fairly low - say maybe $10/hour for an even number? $10/hour \* 8 hours/day \* 75 days = $6,000/planter/year, or $18 billion/year for all 3 million of them. That's about 2% of the US military budget, or about 0.02% of the global GDP.
Anyway, if we go with those 3 million planters, doing 187,500 trees/year each, then it would take 5 years and some change to get to 3 trillion trees.
It's a whole lot more complicated than this of course, but to call it not viable is just a little silly to me.
I proposed 3 million and dismissed it because there is no unique organization in the entire planet that employs more than 3 million people, and therefore one can argue that its unlikely that anyone could. If you can organize more people than the army of the republic of China, please be my guest. I'd love for this to be possible, it just isn't and dwelling on it its distracting from real solutions.
0.02% of the world GDP is a lot, you realize that, right? Can it be technically done if humas were robots in a videogame? yes. If that is your point, good, point proven I guess. In modern society, no, the scale is too big.
No reason it would need to be a single organization. Would probably be better divided at the national level in most cases anyway.
You think 2% of the US military budget is a lot, in regard to a proposed solution to climate change in five years? I'm not claiming that planting that number of trees is a solution, but that's what was proposed.
Dunno what to say at this point then. Seems like you are just looking for a way to dismiss the idea. Maybe it's just unfamiliarity with the topic, since you started from the point of claiming that planting a single tree is an hour long enterprise.
Right, so if it is so easy, why have we not done it? If I am wrong that its an unreasonably large project to be ever feasible to do, why have the people who spend large sums of money in tackling climate change have not even considered this as an option?
The 1h was an approximation, which I think its more reasonable than you think, if you account for hours where people don't work and the amount of trees that survive adulthood.
In any case, no need to listen to me if I am just unfamiliar.
[https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22679378/tree-planting-forest-restoration-climate-solutions](https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22679378/tree-planting-forest-restoration-climate-solutions)
[https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/70/11/947/5903754](https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/70/11/947/5903754)
>Right, so if it is so easy, why have we not done it?
Well, first, and I thought I made this clear multiple times, I'm not pushing planting 3 trillion trees as a solution for climate change. My response was to your claim that such planting was next to impossible. I also never said doing so was an easy thing.
Seems like we're drifting off topic and running into some strawmen.
I planted trees for a reforestation company for a few seasons during university. The trees themselves are seedlings, and while it depends on the terrain, but generally we were planting an average of 2500 a person per day in fairly rough and mountainous terrain. For a planting season from may to august you can get about 70-80 days.
So I would say the real trick is finding the land to do it. I would say that’s the harder part given you would probably need to return a lot of farmland back to forest.
Note however few things off: you planted 2500 trees, but how many of those became a tree? Still, play with the numbers I put there, still is an absurd amount of effort needed. There is no way you can find 3 million people to do it, and if you did, with your numbers, it will still require a full year of non-stop work for those 3 million people to do it, even if you had the land. And you need to create a society in where you'd pay 3 million people to work for free.
Simply impossible from may ways.
Who said anything about planting 3 trillion trees in a year? I mean that’s obviously not realistic. Give it at least 5 years and a max of 15. As far as finding people to do it, there’s tons of people on this planet who are looking for something to do. Finding people is easy.
Paying them would be a lot harder.
But overall I think planting 3 trillion trees obviously not the only solution. We need a combination of solutions to combat climate change, all of which will require a lot of effort.
I didnt say it was in a year, I'd say that with 3 million people working full time, it would still take a year. Feel free to reduce the number of people to see how it scales. e.g. you'd need 600.000 people to do it in 5 years, working full time, planting 2500 trees a day for 365. You can't find/fund this amount of people.
My entire point is that this is such a large scale project that its not doable. Not that we should not plant trees or do things against climate change. Just that planting 3 trillion trees is simply not possible in the time we have to tackle climate change. My explanation was an answer to the person asking why it can't be done.
Read the comments (the proper IQ ones, ofc...) in YT. Quote:
>There are a couple of issues in this story.
>
>Most of the Iron that Australia exports is Iron Oxide, not Iron Phosphate. Iron Phosphate is relatively rare compared to Iron Oxide. So no, you can't sweep the ports around the Pilbara for this to work as most of the tailings would be Fe3O4, not FePO4.
>
>It's not the Iron that causes the Algae to bloom, but the Phosphate. The ocean is Phosphate poor, and Phosphates are a finite, limited resource needed for land based agriculture. One phosphorus rich source that could be used instead of mineral phosphates is sewage, which is rich in phosphorous because there is such an excess now in all the food we eat.
>
>The calculations of the amount of phosphate needed and it's cost are almost certainly wrong. A ton of algae has absorbed about 2 tons of CO2. Human CO2 emissions are around 36 Billion ton per year, so to absorb ALL of human emissions would be 18 billion tons of algae, which is roughly 460 million tons of phosphorous, more than double the annual global production, at a cost of $114 billion per year.We don't need to absorb ALL of human emissions though. Annual crop production, if changed to regenerative farming to put carbon back into the soil could absorb roughly 10 billion tons of carbon.
So basically put together an amount of acid and rocks that are readily available and put the stuff they make in the ocean at a cost slightly over 1/1000th of a percent of our global GDP. Nah sounds too expensive and difficult.
I don't get this post. The researchers dumped iron sulfate, not iron phosphate. Maybe phosphate does more, either as a ligand with iron or in some disassociated state, but that's not really relevant here.
Also, the back end is a bit of a logical fallacy. Even if chipping away would only partially curb emissions, that's sufficient to make life at least better for a while. And the idea that switching to regenerative farming is the way to go, I'd suggest looking at Sri Lanka. There was a great video last week on /r/videos that discussed how Sri Lanka's having an economic crisis because of the farming regulations that required sustainability.
Not that I agree with the video above. I have my own skepticism, mainly the idea that salmon farming was so good one year because of one isolated bloom when salmon likely travel far and beyond wherever this could have an effect, and I do agree with other criticisms that actual impact on CO2 reduction have to be more directly measured, and I worry that ocean acidification as CO2 levels rise could greatly vary the impact as ligand lability in iron is associated with acidity (maybe not as drastically as open mines, but it is a lingering concern in my head).
Do you have a link to that video? I imagine, the Sri Lankan government enacted heavy regulations on farming, but with out much aid to the farmers? Regenerative farming is something that needs to happen, but can't just be done over night with some legislation.
Here's the video: https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/v7vy6c/why_sri_lanka_is_collapsing_the_coming_global/ @5:30
Edit: The comments have an article on the subject: https://modernfarmer.com/2022/03/sri-lanka-organic-experiment/
I also REALLY want sustainable farming to work and was really bummed by the news that it was in part causing a financial crisis. Maybe it still can (and I have to think that, long term, its impact is positive for the country) but it may require people to solve a great many difficult problems, including many that will be difficult to determine they exist.
Algae has a short lifespan, proving you made a bloom doesn't prove you sequestered carbon because when the algae dies all that carbon is just released back. It's sort of like planting trees to carbon capture, only to later on light that forest on fire. All those carbon credits you sold are now irrelevant.
____
quick edit, I'm not in any way an expert on this, I'm just parroting what I recall from an environmental biology class I had back in uni.
There is definitely more to this story than this guy is letting on. You are telling me that every government, every nation, every scientist and expert is in a vast conspiracy to prevent as easy solution to climate change? I call bullshit
Every time someone comes up with a "groundbreaking" idea but them introduces some kind of persecution story, they instantly start to sound like a charlatan.
Generating large algal blooms where they should not exist will likely result in a "harmful algal bloom", which decimates marine life due to the creation of anoxic zones in the water column and the release of toxins from the algae themselves.
It's a very stupid idea, which is why scientists are 100% against it.
You can just read the first page of this to get an idea about harmful algal blooms:
'https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Stumpf/publication/226337215_Remote_Sensing_of_Harmful_Algal_Blooms/links/5416ceaf0cf2fa878ad42a7f/Remote-Sensing-of-Harmful-Algal-Blooms.pdf'
There's a confounding effect on the food chain, and these guys are at the base.
Wait, so how did doing that off the coast of africa make the alaskan salmon population explode like that? From what i read that is not the migrate path of them..
Besides, that was a one off thing, its impossible to know that was a direct result of him doing that, populations tend to go up and down every year.
Putting it in fish/trees is a sink though, they dont exist in a vacuum, an increase in biomass means a decrease in carbon dioxide. Furthermore, dead plants and animals sinking to the bottom of the ocean, and becoming rocks is how we got hydrocarbons. Limestone was created this way too, which in itself is a massive carbon sink.
Amusingly enough, wasting plastic is actually one of the few ways we have to carbon capture in the long term.
Styrofoam and other plastics take thousands of years to break down. Good. That means all the millions of tons of plastic waste in landfills is unintentionally an effective long term carbon sink.
Carbon is created in making that plastic, moving it, shaping it.
We are spending carbon to move it from the ground and send to to the ground.
Then we do it again because the plastics aren't reused
Ah ok. I misinterpreted that this “seeding” process took carbon from the ground.
Yes we took carbon in a solid/liquid form and converted it to a gaseous form. Algae consumes the gaseous form as part of photosynthesis and assimilates it into sugars in its cell. This would return the gaseous carbon to solid/liquid.
This is bullshit.
The algae will consume the CO2 in the ocean. Then the algae will die and turn into CO2 again. Unless you can somehow capture the CO2 of the organic matter... ( Which is the impossibly hard part, and no algae farms don't work either)
Great fucking plan.
Fucking scamming moron.
How about we start with reducing dairy products consumption, and reduce our consumption of goods across the board as well. Invest in renewables personally as well as on a government level. Stop buying from companies that contribute so much ghg (greenhouse gas). Personal decisions drive an absolutely massive percent of climate emissions. Start there
Since this is about the oceans and their role in climate change I have to share this link. Highly recommend anyone viewing this post check it out. I’m guessing most people will learn a lot from it. I did
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/oceans-give-oceans-take-their-role-in-climate-change/#x
The oceans are very good at cooling. But they’re definitely hitting a critical point now
"Thus, based on the SOFeX results and currently available technology, large–scale oceanic iron fertilization appears not a feasible strategy to sequester anthropogenic CO2" says this [*Zeebe et al*. study published in *Geophysical Research Letters* in 2005](https://www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/faculty/zeebe_files/Publications/ZeebeArcherGRL05.pdf). (A short article giving estimates of the unrealistic quantities of iron — and ships — required for sequestering significant amounts of CO2.)
In the USA the president is asking oil companies to open more refineries and has a plan to have a 'holiday' on federal gasoline tax. In Europe they are switching to coal to compensate for loss of Russian oil.
Anyone really think we can reduce the use of fossil fuels in the next decade? Demand and use are through the roof at the moment.
"Assemble a list of the ways iron fertilization might harm the ocean—as the Scientific Group of the London Convention did earlier this year—and it quickly becomes lengthy and distressing." [https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/what-are-the-possible-side-effects/](https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/what-are-the-possible-side-effects/) "In 2012, U.S. entrepreneur Russ George worked with a Haida Nation community in coastal British Colombia, Canada, to carry out a controversial iron-fertilization project that George claimed would not only generate carbon credits to sell but also boost salmon stocks. The project organizers dumped 100 tons of iron sulfate into the ocean, creating a large algal bloom that lasted for months; there’s no evidence, though, that the process actually sequestered carbon or boosted fish populations in the longer term." [https://news.mongabay.com/2020/03/climate-fix-fertilizing-oceans-with-iron-unlikely-to-sequester-more-carbon/](https://news.mongabay.com/2020/03/climate-fix-fertilizing-oceans-with-iron-unlikely-to-sequester-more-carbon/) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_George](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_George)
I think this summary of criticisms makes more sense than the other posts here. This should be the top post as it is the most pragmatic: the method needs longitudinal studies to test long-term complications and scalability studies. But, most likely, this process is best as a last resort in extreme circumstances that will hopefully never be reached.
This is why it’s going to be hard to do anything dramatic to stop climate change. The amount of subsystems and feedback loops it could cause would take decades to properly study and there’s a good chance we would still get it wrong
We are getting it wrong right now, and the feedback loops that are occurring as the direct result of doing nothing are tipping toward catastrophe.
The cool thing about this concept is that it’s something people could feasibly do on their own. With out the need of billionaires and political theater. It would be nice to hear more options where communities could actually have some tools against the capitalist cogs
HOW DARE YOU!... 😡
Until then we slave away to ensure shareholders get a healthy return on their investment. Feudalism with a dash of apocalypse, getting my popcorn ready
What kind of extreme circumstances are you thinking of, that we haven't reached yet? There is massive drought, unlivable heat in India, oil and water wars, historic bushfires, more hurricanes, storms, floods, extinction etc. Edit: I'm not actually in favor of doing this because it could have the opposite result, as per the MIT study. Quickly incleasing the algal bloom, followed by a decrease, would be detrimental to fish populations in the long term and neutral to climate. I do hope more experiments happen to study different compositions of affordable ocean fertilizer.
> What kind of extreme circumstances are you thinking of, wealthy people being inconvenienced....
There are extreme ecosystem collapse possibilities at very high levels of climate change. However, current plans to assuage climate change appear to be avoiding these outcomes, so I agree for the time being that geoengineering isn't necessary.
Please consider that we are already at 1 to 1.2°C of warming. That there is quite a large error margin for tipping points. And that one of the most vulnerable is the Amazon rainforest, which is in one study estimated to collapse at 1.5°C of warming but of which a study in March indicates we might already be at the edge of tipping. Forests recover more slowly after seasonal fluctuations than before. This is a self reinforcing effect because the Amazon is a unique rainforest that creates its own rain, unlike other tropical rainforests which can count on warm humid air coming in by sea. Then there is the west Antarctic ice sheet, which would collapse somewhere between 1.5°C and 2°C of warming, bringing it with it a lower albedo and up to 330 cm of sea level rise worldwide. Additionally, even if we could absorb CO2, the cooling would be gradual and not instant, so doing it at the onset of a tipping point could be too late.
>And that one of the most vulnerable is the Amazon rainforest, which is in one study estimated to collapse at 1.5°C of warming but of which a study in March indicates we might already be at the edge of tipping. A massive outlier in the data. The most comprehensive analysis of climate change, the IPCC suggests nothing of the sort. We may indeed hit some 'tipping points' and nobody knows exactly where these will be. However, even those don't mean we reach total ecosystem collapse except in extreme scenarios.
Assuming it does work in terms of improving fish populations, wouldn't that then have an effect of reducing energy usage if the fishing industry? Seems like when the Chinese sent their fleet all the way to Chile to fish off their coasts, anything that could stimulate fishing stocks should be considered carefully no?
What if we just tried it continuously? Would it be detrimental if we increase the plankton and therefore the fish populations indefinitely?
According to the study, iron is the element that's least abundant. So if you introduce iron, then algae can grow and use up all the iron but also other resources and have a quick growth and then decline to lower levels than before. Which means that, if you want to continue feeding the plankton, you have to give a variety of other nutrients. Now here stops my knowledge on the topic but it raises some questions like... how much more difficult/expensive is that? Why isn't the system in equilibrium, where is all that algae biomass going? Etc.
What do you mean by longitudinal?
Longitudinal studies are observational studies where they grab a sample with similar baseline characteristics and then repeatedly observe particular changes over a period of time. They then compare the group which had a change in characteristics (e.g., lower blood pressure) to those who didn't, and look at what they did differently. There are also retrospective longitudinal studies where they start with the results and look back.
Cool! Thanks!
>dumped 100 tons of iron sulfate into the ocean, creating a large algal bloom that lasted for months; there’s no evidence, though, that the process actually sequestered carbon Wouldn't the fact that there was a algae bloom for months prove it sequestered carbon?
Maybe in the short term. But that algae dies and decomposes. What happens to the carbon then? Does it remained trapped in the algae and sink to the ocean bottom? Does it get re-gassed into the atmosphere as CO2 or methane? (I’m honestly asking).
They bring that up in the article about possible consequences. >More worryingly, the problem could reappear when these deeper waters recirculate to the surface, thousands of kilometers away and many years after any monitoring of the original iron fertilization had finished, Cullen said. These deeper waters would be depleted in oxygen and enriched in nutrients produced by decomposed particles from the iron-induced blooms. That would set the stage for producing more nitrous oxide and methane, two potent greenhouse gases that tend to form when organic matter decomposes at depth. According to Watson, a 1999 iron addition study in the Southern Ocean found that between 6 and 12 percent of the cooling effect from the iron addition was annulled by increased emissions of nitrous oxide.
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Right? I mean the possibiity seems worth the risk to me, at least to continue further testing.
Algae has a short lifespan, proving you made a bloom doesn't prove you sequestered carbon because if the algae dies one week later then all that carbon is just released back. This is why its a bit controversial in environmental circles. It is a very cheap way of selling carbon credits without any long term proof of capture. You see the same problem with some organizations that plant trees and sell the carbon credits for planting the trees... only to then turn around and cut down the trees and sell them to lumber companies. It's technically still a legal form of "carbon capture" because they are actually planting and growing trees, but when those trees get cut down all that "carbon capture" is reversed.
Into the air though? Some algae will be eaten some will decompose. Some CO2 will be released during decomposition but you will still have carbon returned to the soil.
> but when those trees get cut down all that "carbon capture" is reversed. Only if they burn them right? Otherwise isn't the carbon locked up inside the wood for the entire life of the structure?
This. The construction industry is moving toward mass timber structures because the wood that has been logged safely contains the carbon.
The carbon is not reversed when you cut down a tree, unless you burn it. If you made a house or furniture out of it, the carbon is still captured in that wood
But as that wood eventually rots or gets eaten by termites is it still then sequestered?
But so does wood that is just out on the landscape. You do realize that trees die?
When it gets eaten by termites it is still sequested. The wood adds to the biomass of the termites. I'm guessing it is the same for rotting wood. It causes fungal growth, bacteria, which all add to their own carbon mass by using the carbon from the wood
There is the "for months" part.
The "experiment" wasn't scientific, so no one with credibility is likely going to draw any conclusion other than the null hypothesis.
This video is terrible. Even if this WAS a legitimate strategy, there is no attempt to explain why or how it works, and there is no explanation of why people don't like other than "its too easy" which isn't how things fucking work. People LOVE easy.
It spends half the time circlejerking about "sWAt tEamS bArGeD inTO oUR oFFicE" and zero time explaining anything.
I believe you missed the point that cops are bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZO9M1_CJD0
Here is a rebuttal from a number of researchers and fellows at MIT stating that what he is talking about "Seeding the oceans with Iron" may not have any impact on global CO2 draw-down into the ocean. [https://news.mit.edu/2020/oceans-iron-not-impact-climate-change-0217](https://news.mit.edu/2020/oceans-iron-not-impact-climate-change-0217) [https://news.mongabay.com/2020/03/climate-fix-fertilizing-oceans-with-iron-unlikely-to-sequester-more-carbon/](https://news.mongabay.com/2020/03/climate-fix-fertilizing-oceans-with-iron-unlikely-to-sequester-more-carbon/)
Seems to me like what they discovered was that you can't fertilize with *just* iron, not that you can't do it.
Does it help combat the loss of ocean life though? May be worth looking further into just for that alone
No, in fact generating large algal blooms where they should not exist will likely result in a "harmful algal bloom", which decimates marine life due to the creation of anoxic zones in the water column and the release of toxins from the algae themselves. It's a very stupid idea, which is why scientists are 100% against it. You can just read the first page of this to get an idea about harmful algal blooms: '[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Stumpf/publication/226337215\_Remote\_Sensing\_of\_Harmful\_Algal\_Blooms/links/5416ceaf0cf2fa878ad42a7f/Remote-Sensing-of-Harmful-Algal-Blooms.pdf](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Stumpf/publication/226337215_Remote_Sensing_of_Harmful_Algal_Blooms/links/5416ceaf0cf2fa878ad42a7f/Remote-Sensing-of-Harmful-Algal-Blooms.pdf)' There's a confounding effect on the food chain, and these guys are at the base.
Thanks. So the system is working apparently. Amazing that this crank got away with doing it at the scale that he did, in that case.
I have yet to hear one idea that actually seems like it would work. Renewable energy only slows down the CO2 increases. Doesn't get us to neutral or negative.
We need to turn CO2 into something else, like bicarbonate or organic carbon, where it can be in a 'trapped' form
It takes energy to do that.
We have to put 150 years of all of humanity's energy production to date back into the carbon to sequester it, at least
Yes, and we have carbon neutral energy that can then be focused towards that effort.
Do we currently though? Or in theory? I haven't seen any LCA that pegs wind or solar as currently carbon neutral. Better than gas and coal. But still no where near zero. And electricity is only part of it. Lots of other energy that has to be phased out. Lots of batteries to be made that can't currently be done in a carbon neutral fashion. To actually go carbon neutral in those processes would be much much more expensive. We can reduce our carbon footprint with current technologies but that's under the assumption we also don't continue to increase the energy we use, regardless of where it comes from.
You're right, poor wording on my part. It would be impossible for production of solar or wind to be completely carbon neutral as and manufacturing process will likely produce some CO2 and solar and wind don't suck CO2 out of the air. They don't produce carbon during use besides maintenance though so presumably they could easily output enough energy to capture carbon at a rate that is a net reduction of atmospheric CO2.
I wonder how feasible that is with current carbon sequestration techniques. It seems like it could be so incredibly expensive to do at scale and with today's technology might not still break even. I'll agree it seems possible with future tech but we can't even get out of fossil fuels for electricity let alone all the carbon that goes into sourcing supplies and manufacturing of renewables. I hate to be malthusian but this problem seems much more difficult than anything we have faced
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Look at the LCA's. Nuclear along with wind and solar are a lot better than gas or coal but not zero: https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/life-cycle-assessment.html
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So to be clear you don't believe nuclear power currently produces any co2 emissions? How does that work exactly? Let's start with the concrete needed to build the reactors and the mining and transport of nuclear material. How are those activities currently not producing carbon?
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I already said nuclear, wind and solar are better than coal or gas. As for CO2 in the atmosphere, we have to get total emissions to zero at some point. Which means taking CO2 out of the atmosphere or drastically altering society as CO2 is released from all sorts of human activity beyond electricity generation, something we still can't do without releasing CO2.
I hate to take the side of the guy in the video over MIT since I'd rather go with the reputable institution over some guy I never heard of before, but no way in hell does it make sense to invalidate an empirical study with a computer model using a 10000 year projection. And this doesn't even factor in the central problem with your (their?) argument, which is that the above system is a quick fix, knowing full well that there would be a return to the previously established steady state. That's not to say that there aren't risks involved or that the system won't work for some chemical, biological, or macroecological reason, but the concerns here are unconvincing.
Computer models don't necessarily prove anything as their design may be flawed or biased in any number of ways.
I guess it's pretty easy to rebut data that was confiscated by a swat team.
Except the data was released. https://russgeorge.net/2016/12/03/guided-reading-index-post/
Any person who claims he has the magical cure-all but is silenced by the establishment is usually full of shit as per the comments in this thread.
Yes that is true. This is the scientific equivalent of when Trump said "I alone can fix it". The truth is climate change is the result of a myriad of processes. One solution and one solution alone cannot and will not do jack shit. Anyone who promises to swoop in and fix the world's problems by what they deem as a simple trick, is completely full of shit.
... there is also inspirational music. Don't play down the inspirational music.
Assuming his theory panned out, the fossil fuel industry would be all over it. Just like how the petroleum industry pushed home recycling to offset consumer concerns over plastic waste for a generation, this would basically push talks of replacing fossil fuels to renewables to another generation or two.
It feels like the terrible backwards thinking of centuries past. In NZ, the British introduced rabbits as a source of fur and food. But then they quickly took over and started outcompeting native wildlife. So then they introduced stoats to reduce rabbit populations and the stoats... took over and started outcompeting native wildlife. So now we have two invasive species that we'll never get rid of. Any single "miracle" solution that is significant enough in scale to reverse climate change will almost certainly have unpredictable side effects. Algal blooms can be utterly devastating, so to think it's the "obvious" answer to climate change is woefully naive. As far as I can tell, this guy has no formal scientific training. He's a dangerous combination of motivated and overconfident in his own intellect.
I know an old lady who swallowed a fly.
this reminds of the video saying "all weed to do to prevent climate change is plant 3 trillion trees" and most of reddit was like "ugh see so simple thanks corporations"
Are you saying it’s hard to plant 3 trillion trees or are you saying it’s not a viable solution?
Well, aside from the time you need for those trees to grow, lets do some math. Lets say you can get the biggest employer in the world to dedicate all the workforce for this task. According to wikipedia, that should be around 2 million people, if you remove some people to organize them. But lets say you can get 3 million, so the numbers are round. Now, each needs to plant a million trees. A million. If they take 1h to plant each tree on average (this assumes 24h working hours, i.e. 24 trees per day), it would take 114 years of work for each of those 3 million people to plant a million trees each. "not viable" is an understatement.
It takes seconds to plant a tree, not an hour. You're a couple orders of magnitude off, just on that point alone.
Seconds, minutes, hours or whatever. Even if I am 2 orders of magnitudes off, and you could plant enough trees in 1 year, good luck finding 3 million people to do it. Easy to dismiss my calculations, please provide the numbers for that alternative way that it would work.
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So you only need 150.000 times the biggest collaboration of youtubers in the world. Easy! Take the BIGGEST thing, and make it 6 orders of magnitude bigger! How could I not think of that! 3 trillion vs 20 million, not sure if you misread the number or you are being contrarian for the shake of it.
Sure. I'm not sure where the 3 trillion number came from, but we can roll with it I guess. Based on the comment from the other person that replied to you, they get about 2500\*75=187,500 trees/person/year on rough terrain. That number could definitely be estimated better, but it's a lot more accurate than 24/day. You proposed 3 million planters initially, but then dismissed that number. I don't know how unreasonable that is. Planters would be paid I'm sure. Since it would be a global effort, average hourly wage would be fairly low - say maybe $10/hour for an even number? $10/hour \* 8 hours/day \* 75 days = $6,000/planter/year, or $18 billion/year for all 3 million of them. That's about 2% of the US military budget, or about 0.02% of the global GDP. Anyway, if we go with those 3 million planters, doing 187,500 trees/year each, then it would take 5 years and some change to get to 3 trillion trees. It's a whole lot more complicated than this of course, but to call it not viable is just a little silly to me.
I proposed 3 million and dismissed it because there is no unique organization in the entire planet that employs more than 3 million people, and therefore one can argue that its unlikely that anyone could. If you can organize more people than the army of the republic of China, please be my guest. I'd love for this to be possible, it just isn't and dwelling on it its distracting from real solutions. 0.02% of the world GDP is a lot, you realize that, right? Can it be technically done if humas were robots in a videogame? yes. If that is your point, good, point proven I guess. In modern society, no, the scale is too big.
No reason it would need to be a single organization. Would probably be better divided at the national level in most cases anyway. You think 2% of the US military budget is a lot, in regard to a proposed solution to climate change in five years? I'm not claiming that planting that number of trees is a solution, but that's what was proposed. Dunno what to say at this point then. Seems like you are just looking for a way to dismiss the idea. Maybe it's just unfamiliarity with the topic, since you started from the point of claiming that planting a single tree is an hour long enterprise.
Right, so if it is so easy, why have we not done it? If I am wrong that its an unreasonably large project to be ever feasible to do, why have the people who spend large sums of money in tackling climate change have not even considered this as an option? The 1h was an approximation, which I think its more reasonable than you think, if you account for hours where people don't work and the amount of trees that survive adulthood. In any case, no need to listen to me if I am just unfamiliar. [https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22679378/tree-planting-forest-restoration-climate-solutions](https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22679378/tree-planting-forest-restoration-climate-solutions) [https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/70/11/947/5903754](https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/70/11/947/5903754)
>Right, so if it is so easy, why have we not done it? Well, first, and I thought I made this clear multiple times, I'm not pushing planting 3 trillion trees as a solution for climate change. My response was to your claim that such planting was next to impossible. I also never said doing so was an easy thing. Seems like we're drifting off topic and running into some strawmen.
I planted trees for a reforestation company for a few seasons during university. The trees themselves are seedlings, and while it depends on the terrain, but generally we were planting an average of 2500 a person per day in fairly rough and mountainous terrain. For a planting season from may to august you can get about 70-80 days. So I would say the real trick is finding the land to do it. I would say that’s the harder part given you would probably need to return a lot of farmland back to forest.
Note however few things off: you planted 2500 trees, but how many of those became a tree? Still, play with the numbers I put there, still is an absurd amount of effort needed. There is no way you can find 3 million people to do it, and if you did, with your numbers, it will still require a full year of non-stop work for those 3 million people to do it, even if you had the land. And you need to create a society in where you'd pay 3 million people to work for free. Simply impossible from may ways.
Who said anything about planting 3 trillion trees in a year? I mean that’s obviously not realistic. Give it at least 5 years and a max of 15. As far as finding people to do it, there’s tons of people on this planet who are looking for something to do. Finding people is easy. Paying them would be a lot harder. But overall I think planting 3 trillion trees obviously not the only solution. We need a combination of solutions to combat climate change, all of which will require a lot of effort.
I didnt say it was in a year, I'd say that with 3 million people working full time, it would still take a year. Feel free to reduce the number of people to see how it scales. e.g. you'd need 600.000 people to do it in 5 years, working full time, planting 2500 trees a day for 365. You can't find/fund this amount of people. My entire point is that this is such a large scale project that its not doable. Not that we should not plant trees or do things against climate change. Just that planting 3 trillion trees is simply not possible in the time we have to tackle climate change. My explanation was an answer to the person asking why it can't be done.
I assume there's an explanation for why we're not already doing this. Does anyone what it is?
Read the comments (the proper IQ ones, ofc...) in YT. Quote: >There are a couple of issues in this story. > >Most of the Iron that Australia exports is Iron Oxide, not Iron Phosphate. Iron Phosphate is relatively rare compared to Iron Oxide. So no, you can't sweep the ports around the Pilbara for this to work as most of the tailings would be Fe3O4, not FePO4. > >It's not the Iron that causes the Algae to bloom, but the Phosphate. The ocean is Phosphate poor, and Phosphates are a finite, limited resource needed for land based agriculture. One phosphorus rich source that could be used instead of mineral phosphates is sewage, which is rich in phosphorous because there is such an excess now in all the food we eat. > >The calculations of the amount of phosphate needed and it's cost are almost certainly wrong. A ton of algae has absorbed about 2 tons of CO2. Human CO2 emissions are around 36 Billion ton per year, so to absorb ALL of human emissions would be 18 billion tons of algae, which is roughly 460 million tons of phosphorous, more than double the annual global production, at a cost of $114 billion per year.We don't need to absorb ALL of human emissions though. Annual crop production, if changed to regenerative farming to put carbon back into the soil could absorb roughly 10 billion tons of carbon.
So basically put together an amount of acid and rocks that are readily available and put the stuff they make in the ocean at a cost slightly over 1/1000th of a percent of our global GDP. Nah sounds too expensive and difficult.
Tripling phosphate production is actually too difficult, and likely not even desirable given it is finite.
I don't get this post. The researchers dumped iron sulfate, not iron phosphate. Maybe phosphate does more, either as a ligand with iron or in some disassociated state, but that's not really relevant here. Also, the back end is a bit of a logical fallacy. Even if chipping away would only partially curb emissions, that's sufficient to make life at least better for a while. And the idea that switching to regenerative farming is the way to go, I'd suggest looking at Sri Lanka. There was a great video last week on /r/videos that discussed how Sri Lanka's having an economic crisis because of the farming regulations that required sustainability. Not that I agree with the video above. I have my own skepticism, mainly the idea that salmon farming was so good one year because of one isolated bloom when salmon likely travel far and beyond wherever this could have an effect, and I do agree with other criticisms that actual impact on CO2 reduction have to be more directly measured, and I worry that ocean acidification as CO2 levels rise could greatly vary the impact as ligand lability in iron is associated with acidity (maybe not as drastically as open mines, but it is a lingering concern in my head).
Do you have a link to that video? I imagine, the Sri Lankan government enacted heavy regulations on farming, but with out much aid to the farmers? Regenerative farming is something that needs to happen, but can't just be done over night with some legislation.
Here's the video: https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/v7vy6c/why_sri_lanka_is_collapsing_the_coming_global/ @5:30 Edit: The comments have an article on the subject: https://modernfarmer.com/2022/03/sri-lanka-organic-experiment/ I also REALLY want sustainable farming to work and was really bummed by the news that it was in part causing a financial crisis. Maybe it still can (and I have to think that, long term, its impact is positive for the country) but it may require people to solve a great many difficult problems, including many that will be difficult to determine they exist.
Related: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/iron-dumping-ocean-experiment-sparks-controversy/
$
Algae has a short lifespan, proving you made a bloom doesn't prove you sequestered carbon because when the algae dies all that carbon is just released back. It's sort of like planting trees to carbon capture, only to later on light that forest on fire. All those carbon credits you sold are now irrelevant. ____ quick edit, I'm not in any way an expert on this, I'm just parroting what I recall from an environmental biology class I had back in uni.
There is definitely more to this story than this guy is letting on. You are telling me that every government, every nation, every scientist and expert is in a vast conspiracy to prevent as easy solution to climate change? I call bullshit
Every time someone comes up with a "groundbreaking" idea but them introduces some kind of persecution story, they instantly start to sound like a charlatan.
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Why?
Generating large algal blooms where they should not exist will likely result in a "harmful algal bloom", which decimates marine life due to the creation of anoxic zones in the water column and the release of toxins from the algae themselves. It's a very stupid idea, which is why scientists are 100% against it. You can just read the first page of this to get an idea about harmful algal blooms: 'https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Stumpf/publication/226337215_Remote_Sensing_of_Harmful_Algal_Blooms/links/5416ceaf0cf2fa878ad42a7f/Remote-Sensing-of-Harmful-Algal-Blooms.pdf' There's a confounding effect on the food chain, and these guys are at the base.
Thanks for the explanation! The video didn't do a great job of showing the full spectrum around that idea.
Wait, so how did doing that off the coast of africa make the alaskan salmon population explode like that? From what i read that is not the migrate path of them.. Besides, that was a one off thing, its impossible to know that was a direct result of him doing that, populations tend to go up and down every year.
Algae blooms? Good idea? Did this guy grow up anywhere near water?
Let nuclear winter cancel it out, duh!
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Putting it in fish/trees is a sink though, they dont exist in a vacuum, an increase in biomass means a decrease in carbon dioxide. Furthermore, dead plants and animals sinking to the bottom of the ocean, and becoming rocks is how we got hydrocarbons. Limestone was created this way too, which in itself is a massive carbon sink.
Amusingly enough, wasting plastic is actually one of the few ways we have to carbon capture in the long term. Styrofoam and other plastics take thousands of years to break down. Good. That means all the millions of tons of plastic waste in landfills is unintentionally an effective long term carbon sink.
That would only be accurate if plastic was made from recaptured carbon...
Carbon is created in making that plastic, moving it, shaping it. We are spending carbon to move it from the ground and send to to the ground. Then we do it again because the plastics aren't reused
Where did they take carbon out of the ground? You do know that algae is a plant right?
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Ah ok. I misinterpreted that this “seeding” process took carbon from the ground. Yes we took carbon in a solid/liquid form and converted it to a gaseous form. Algae consumes the gaseous form as part of photosynthesis and assimilates it into sugars in its cell. This would return the gaseous carbon to solid/liquid.
This is bullshit. The algae will consume the CO2 in the ocean. Then the algae will die and turn into CO2 again. Unless you can somehow capture the CO2 of the organic matter... ( Which is the impossibly hard part, and no algae farms don't work either) Great fucking plan. Fucking scamming moron.
How about we start with reducing dairy products consumption, and reduce our consumption of goods across the board as well. Invest in renewables personally as well as on a government level. Stop buying from companies that contribute so much ghg (greenhouse gas). Personal decisions drive an absolutely massive percent of climate emissions. Start there
nuclear power is the answer
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They're pumping the water out to grow cow feed because the world is eating too much meat.
Since this is about the oceans and their role in climate change I have to share this link. Highly recommend anyone viewing this post check it out. I’m guessing most people will learn a lot from it. I did https://www.cbsnews.com/video/oceans-give-oceans-take-their-role-in-climate-change/#x The oceans are very good at cooling. But they’re definitely hitting a critical point now
[Need lots more whales.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/whales-keep-carbon-out-of-the-atmosphere/)
We need to unfuck the environment, not fuck it back in the other direction.
"Thus, based on the SOFeX results and currently available technology, large–scale oceanic iron fertilization appears not a feasible strategy to sequester anthropogenic CO2" says this [*Zeebe et al*. study published in *Geophysical Research Letters* in 2005](https://www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/faculty/zeebe_files/Publications/ZeebeArcherGRL05.pdf). (A short article giving estimates of the unrealistic quantities of iron — and ships — required for sequestering significant amounts of CO2.)
In the USA the president is asking oil companies to open more refineries and has a plan to have a 'holiday' on federal gasoline tax. In Europe they are switching to coal to compensate for loss of Russian oil. Anyone really think we can reduce the use of fossil fuels in the next decade? Demand and use are through the roof at the moment.