Moss Landing researchers reveal iron as key to climate change

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

[bert]

i think you have it backwards.

Global warming is said to result from an increase in the Green House gas carbon dioxide. The increase prevents heat from being expelled into space via the atmosphere.

By adding a iron fertilizer to the southern oceans, phytoplankton increase and consume CO2. The CO2 consumption allows the trapped heat to dissapate, thus reducing the greenhouse effect warming.

Presumedly the iron is added as the oxide, rust.

[ruiner]

I'll admit, I didn't read the article, let me correct my statement:

The United States is unilaterally changing the climate of the earth. This is illegal by definitions put forth in some odd legal document the "world" put together at sometime nobody can say. We must stop our use of Iron in the oceans and let Zimbabwe and Romania make contributions to climate change or risk isolating them and hurting their feelings.

[cogitator]

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.

Thinking as a futurist, the idea has merit. I'd have to worry about trace metals that might be harmful (like arsenic and chromium and lead) that might be in the sludge, and we all know about the problems of mercury and cadmium in the food chain; but I wonder if you could process the stuff with metal-specific chelates that would leave the iron in it and take out the more insidious stuff? If you could finish with an organic-rich, iron-enriched mixture, even if 98% of it went to the bottom (no big deal, that's a lot of sea floor), the other 2% might be enough to get a sustainable bloom going. If the economic and enviromental circumstances made the climate favorable, who knows?

[Carry_Okie]

I'd have to worry about trace metals that might be harmful (like arsenic and chromium and lead) that might be in the sludge, and we all know about the problems of mercury and cadmium in the food chain; but I wonder if you could process the stuff with metal-specific chelates that would leave the iron in it and take out the more insidious stuff?

My thoughts exactly.

If you could finish with an organic-rich, iron-enriched mixture, even if 98% of it went to the bottom (no big deal, that's a lot of sea floor), the other 2% might be enough to get a sustainable bloom going.

How wasteful! Why not have a floating farm out there making the most of it? What's wrong with an oceanic nation? Get the UN out of this and whatch it go.

Private property is the answer. Need a model? ;-)

[cogitator]

How wasteful! Why not have a floating farm out there making the most of it? What's wrong with an oceanic nation? Get the UN out of this and whatch it go.

The reason I said that is due to the fact that if your processing costs are too high, then it's not an economically viable plan (as I'm sure you know). To get the iron to stay at the surface in dissolved form, you'd have to acidify the sludge mix after removing the dangerous metals. But if you just processed out the metals and then dumped in the mix as is, most of it would still go to the bottom, but enough would "float" to release the iron from natural chelators in the organic matter. That would be considerably cheaper than acidification.

[Carry_Okie]

It depends upon particle size and miscibility (biotechnology being called for there). If you can get the particle size such that Stokes law suspends it by brownian motion above the pycnocline, voila: suspension in the photosphere, particulary in summer and fall.

[SunkenCiv]

Climate change, catastrophism, prehistory, pick a ping, we've got it. :')

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[blam]

"Climate change, catastrophism, prehistory, pick a ping, we've got it. :') "

LOL!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I am drowning in reading material.

What does all of this say about Syria and Zaragawi?...LOL!

[Renfield]

It (the iron) has to be chelated. There is so much bicarbonate in the ocean that any added solution pretty quickly assumes the pH of 8.2.

Our blood has a carbonate-bicarbonate buffer (not coincidentally, at pH 8.2), and we have hemoglobin in our blood as a chelating agent so the iron (needed in oxygen transfer) doesn't precipitate out.