Moss Landing researchers reveal iron as key to climate change

Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) ^ | APRIL 15, 2004 | PRESS RELEASE

[ruiner]

In other words: The United States must cut its use of Iron and Iron related products by 99% in the next 5 years. China, India, EU and any other potential competitor may follow when it suits them.

[DManA]

Oh Damn!! Not another !$##%$$%#%$%# variable to add to the climate model!!!!

[ijcr]

The Titanic,the French Fleet,and now the USS Oriskany...how much more iron does it take.

[ckilmer]

i don't think so.

current thinking is that warming will melt greenland and stop the gulf stream which will set off another ice age in the north.

you wouldn't apply the iron to the oceans until the ice was advancing...right now all the ice is retreating around the north and south poles.

[ckilmer]

likely the iron in these ships was locked up in a form that is not usuable to the phytoplankton.

[ckilmer]

likely there are many more variables. my guess would be that they won't have it right until they make allowances for extraterrestrial perturbations from stuff like ice comets iron meteors, & space dust.

[B4Ranch]

ping

[Carry_Okie]

I first proposed dispersing sewer sludge near the center of the Pacific Gyre as a means of producing an algae bloom to feed foraminiferae in 1982 (back when I still believed anthropogenic global warming was a real problem). The gyre currents being circular produces a region that has few nutrients; it is a biological desert. To produce the food for the diatoms that take the calcium carbonate to the bottom requires only fertilization. The circular currents would make containment of the effects tractable. It's farming from the bottom of the biological pyramid.

It is high time that the oceans be colonized and converted to private property. It may be the best way to save them from a global socialized commons.

[expatpat]

When extrapolated over large portions of the Southern Ocean, this finding suggests that iron fertilization could cause billions of tons of carbon to be removed from the atmosphere each year.

I'm a little skeptical, but it sure is interesting!

[cogitator]

how much more iron does it take.

It has to be dissolved in an acidic solution or it will precipitate out as ferric hydroxide at the normal surface pH of seawater.

[cogitator]

I first proposed dispersing sewer sludge near the center of the Pacific Gyre as a means of producing an algae bloom to feed foraminiferae in 1982 (back when I still believed anthropogenic global warming was a real problem)

Though he didn't think about the climatic effects, Arthur C. Clarke beat you to it by a couple of decades in The Deep Range. Not with sewer sludge, but he proposed fertilization and phytoplankton farming to feed the whales... (and there's more to it if you haven't ever read it. Though dated, it's still surprisingly prescient.

I'm not sure if the Pacific Gyre would work as well as the Southern Ocean. The Southern Ocean has plenty of nitrate and phosphate, but not enough iron, which is why iron fertilization works there. The Pacific Gyre doesn't have any upwelling, so it doesn't have nitrate, phosphate or iron (it's a long way from any continents in the mid-Pacific). Though sewer sludge would provide some nitrate and phosphate, and you could enrich it with a little bit of iron, the vast size of that oceanic region means that the scale of the amount you'd have to ship out there is really large.

[FreedomFarmer]

It is high time that the oceans be colonized and converted to private property. It may be the best way to save them from a global socialized commons.

I agree. These grant funded social scientists are playing at changing the climate to suit the political fashion of the day.
I have no doubt that the Earth will recover from any Woops! they create, but mankind might not survive to record the empirical datum.

[Carry_Okie]

Though he didn't think about the climatic effects, Arthur C. Clarke beat you to it by a couple of decades in The Deep Range.

I made the proposal specifically to sequester carbon in calcium carbonate as a sophomore taking college chemistry and oceanology (a great course).

It was an obvious thing to do.

Though sewer sludge would provide some nitrate and phosphate, and you could enrich it with a little bit of iron, the vast size of that oceanic region means that the scale of the amount you'd have to ship out there is really large.

We make a lot of sludge near coastal cities and are looking for better things to do with it. I'd bet there's a fair amount of iron in it as well as trace minerals that we probably don't know about. The transportation by water would be cheaper than we now use by land and in most cases the sludge could be piped instead of burning methane to dry it. I like the containment aspects of the gyre. The stuff goes straight down.

[Carry_Okie]

I have no doubt that the Earth will recover from any Woops! they create, but mankind might not survive to record the empirical datum.

I do habitat restoration on my land. I don't share your optimism. These eco-monsters are that destructive. Note Post #5 on the thread.

[DManA]

Not to mention water vapor.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.
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[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!

[teeman8r]

translation:

we just don't know what is causing what around here...

read a neat article about the reverse polarization of the earth's core which will flip the electromagnetic pulse of the core... the sun has already done so and we are not so far behind... natural occurrence and all that... bush is to blame... women and minorities will be hurt the most... this is hugh.... and very series.... all your pole are belonging to us...

teeman