Posted on 05/01/2007 5:50:37 PM PDT by neverdem
SAN FRANCISCO, April 30 — Can plankton help save the planet?
Some Silicon Valley technocrats are betting that it just might. In an effort to ameliorate the effects of global warming, several groups are working on ventures to grow vast floating fields of plankton intended to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and carry it to the depths of the ocean. It is an idea, debated by experts for years, that still sounds like science fiction — and some scholars think that is where it belongs.
But even though many questions remain unanswered, the first commercial project is scheduled to get under way this month when the WeatherBird II, a 115-foot research vessel, heads out from its dock in Florida to the Galápagos and the South Pacific.
The ship plans to dissolve tons of iron, an essential plankton nutrient, over a 10,000-square-kilometer patch. That’s equivalent to 2.47 million acres (3,861 square miles on land or 2,912 square nautical miles). When the trace iron prompts growth and reproduction of the tiny organism, scientists on the WeatherBird II plan to measure how much carbon dioxide the plankton ingests.
The idea is similar to planting forests full of carbon-inhaling trees, but in desolate stretches of ocean. “This is organic gardening, not rocket science,” said Russ George, the chief executive of Planktos, the company behind the WeatherBird II project. “Can it possibly be as easy as we say it is? We’re about to find out.”
For Mr. George, this is not just science and environmentalism but business, possibly big business. Around the world, new treaties and regulations are forcing corporations to look for ways to offset their carbon emissions, and...
--snip--
And some scholars in the field are concerned that creating plankton blooms could release methane and nitrous oxide, which might increase greenhouse gases.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Plankton from Spongebob sure reminds me of Al Gore:
Little lunatic who is WAY too ambitious.
So true.
DOH! beat me to it
They have to be in Ariz. N.M. and Colo where the sun shines a lot and the land faces south. Good use for this land.
Anything that burns liberal money that would have gone to potential liberal candidates is a goodd thing. Of course, they’ll go after government funding so that they can give their money to their preferred candidates instead.
The primary legacy of the Global Warming movement will be a boondoggle that will dwarf the synfuels boondoggle of the seventies; people are going to get so rich from this nonsense that they'll make the Russian oil barons look like Mother Teresa.
God help us all, our planet does not need their help. The ocean is the single most producer of oxygen and the sci-fi industry is loaded with stories of ecologies gone haywire due to human intervention..........While only science fiction, a lot of it is based on common sense which our leftist community does not seem to have.
TOO EASY.
There is not enough pain in this option to satisfy the green machine.
They want you and me (not themselves) to go back to the stone age rather than actually fixing global warming.
“Save the plankton! Kill the whale!”
As long as technology is their enemy technology can’t be the solution.
Don’t mess with Mother Nature.
Sink CO2 to the bottom of the ocean?
Suppose these ideological jackasses are wrong, which is a pretty good bet. They could bring on another ice age or even weaken plant life worldwide.
Conceivably there could come a time when we could take such actions, but we simply don’t know enough to do it now. Especially something irreversible, in case al goron is wrong.
“...people are going to get so rich from this nonsense that they’ll make the Russian oil barons look like Mother Teresa.”
And as the Good Capitalist Conservatives that we are...can you tell me which Enviro-stocks to buy? LOL!
Can’t you just envision a time, say twenty years or so from now, when ‘Big Enviro’ is the enemy of the ‘Rats, such as ‘Big Ag’ & ‘Big Tobacco’ have been as of late?
‘Big Oil’ has nothing on them; the ‘Rats build up these false economies based upon nothing but conjured fear, then tear them to shreds a few decades later.
Cash in while you can! :)
One word .... kudzu.
Kudzu...the South’s answer to wild blackberry bushes.
So plankton is now on Al Gore’s side? The Democrat operatives will find a way to let the plankton vote illegaly in 2008. Just wait.
Absolutely, the plankton should be scooped up and turned into biodiesel, so it can be burned and the all natural, life nurturing CO2 can be replenished into the atmosphere where it belongs.
At 9:30 p.m. on August 12, 1986, a cloudy mixture of carbon dioxide (CO2) and water droplets rose violently from Lake Nyos, Cameroon. As the lethal mist swept down adjacent valleys, it killed over 1700 people, thousands of cattle, and many more birds and animals.The "local villagers" were probably all scientific illiterate Democrat Liberals.The CO2-rich cloud was expelled rapidly from the southern floor of Lake Nyos. It rose as a jet with a speed of about 100 km per hour. The cloud quickly enveloped houses within the crater that were 120 meters above the shoreline of the lake. Because CO2 is about 1.5 times the density of air, the gaseous mass hugged the ground surface and descended down valleys along the north side of the crater. The deadly cloud was about 50 meters thick and it advanced downslope at a rate of 20 to 50 km per hour. This deadly mist persisted in a concentrated form over a distance of 23 km, bringing sudden death to the villages of Nyos, Kam, Cha, and Subum.
Local villagers attributed the catastrophe to the wrath of a spirit woman of local folklore who inhabits the lakes and rivers.
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