17 ms·

Fertilizing the Ocean with Iron (2007)

38 points by astrobase_go 6y ago

GOONIMMUNE 6y ago
It seems more and more likely to me that the general approach to climate change is going to simply be adaptation. We'll have to figure out ways to live and grow food in a hotter world that has more dramatic weather events. I think this will be expensive and could tragically lead to the deaths of many people who cannot afford to live in this new world. If a large country with many poor people are faced with this situation, maybe it's likely that they might try one of these geoengineering efforts as a last resort? The environmental effects are unpredictable, but if it could save a lot of lives...
- Ma8ee 6y ago
  Yes, we will have to adapt. That doesn’t change the fact we also must try to slow and minimise it as much as is possible. Adapting to two degrees is probably an order of magnitude easier than adapting to four or five degrees. We rich westerners will most likely only be inconvenienced. We have our AC and we can afford more expensive food. If you live close to the coast or a river you might need to move. The greatest problem we will have to face is probably the huge waves of refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Not only from starvation, but from conflicts about e.g., water.
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    The problem we face is the rise of Fascism in response to those waves, and the bad government and, most likely, war, always instigated by Fascists. It is already starting.
    - nix23 6y ago
      >always instigated by Fascists Not really, just look at the US..oil/money
      - ncmncm 6y ago
        You seem to be confused. A counterexample would be a Fascist government that did not instigate a war, given ample time.
        nix23 6y ago
        >given ample time. That's the problem....any government instigate in a ware given enough time, i think your problem is that you have no clue what fascist means.
        ncmncm 6y ago
        You are still confused. Numerous governments have never instigated wars despite ample opportunities. Fascists do not need your defense.
    - Ma8ee 6y ago
      That is only one of the problems.
  - nix23 6y ago
    >We rich westerners will most likely only be inconvenienced. For how many generation will that be?
- JanSolo 6y ago
  Adaptation will happen for sure. Here are some examples of things that we should expect to see in the coming years: * No more building in flood-plains or low-lying coastal regions. * Flood insurance in those areas will lose their subsidies and will become expensive. * Areas in Florida, Louisiana, etc will become poorer as those who can afford to relocate do so. * Farming will slowly move north; southern areas that are currently farms will dry out and become non-viable. * Alternative energy might take the place of farming in the south. Solar farms? Wind Turbines? * Inland cities will become more popular because of their reduced risk of climate-related events. Denver, Phoenix, Dallas, Washington, will likely all get net-positive migration. * Conversely, the big coastal cities will become more expensive and cause people to start leaving. NY, LA, San Francisco, Boston, etc.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
  If you're interested in adaptation in food systems I really enjoyed The Fate of Food: What We'll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World. I'm currently working through Whole Earth Discipline which calls for work on three different fronts: Reduction (of emission), Adaptation (to unavoidable change) and Geoengineering (to prevent the worst of it). Without significant government ran/funded geoengineering projects we'll be living with at least ~1.5 C above pre-industrial levels. We'll need to do some adaptation as is.
  - wahern 6y ago
    > The Fate of Food: What We'll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World. One of my favorite quotes in this vein is "We are eating bait and moving on to jellyfish and plankton", referring to overfishing and climate change changing Americans' seafood diet. From http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/30/local/la-me-ocean30jul30 http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/30/local/la-me-ocean30j.... Of course, many cultures have always eaten and enjoyed jellyfish, but that's beside the point. The ethnocentrism is what sells it to the conservative American audience.[1] ;) [1] Well, older conservative audience. Many younger conservatives grew up only eating trash fish, at best.
    - X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
      > Of course, many cultures have always eaten and enjoyed jellyfish From my brief search it looks like most edible jellyfish is sold heavily salted. Like higher than average beef jerky salty. You'd need to change preservation techniques to really use jellyfish a lot of your daily protein intake. Jellyfish: > Protein 6.67 g > Sodium, Na 2081 mg https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/396504/nutrients https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/396504/n... > Beef jerky > Protein 33.2 g > Sodium, Na 2081 mg > Those headed for the table have their tentacles cut off; it is their upper dome, dried and preserved in salt, which is used in cooking. These jellyfish arrive at the restaurant in stacks of parchment paper, doused in rock salt https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2006/jan/27/foodanddrink.features11 https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2006/jan/27/foodand...
      - 6y ago
- aaron695 6y ago
  > and could tragically lead to the deaths of many people who cannot afford to live in this new world. We don't care about the billions who can't afford to live in the current world. But we do care about the ones who can't afford to live in the new one! Why is this? It took a rich silicon valley dude to care about polio. But every layperson wants to destroy the current economy for future people. Being from the future they are super rich compared to us, like every new generation now, so perhaps they just are better at writing Twitter hash tags?
omginternets 6y ago
Every time I read something like this, my hubris alarm goes off. We couldn't even get trans-fats right, so I don't see how we're going to cover all the contingencies for something like this.
- OneGuy123 6y ago
  It's sad that this comment is downvoted. The saying that "the greediest capitalist oil driller won't destroy the planet not nearly as much as a 'well meaning' scientists" seems to be coming true. The arrogance that they believe that such a thing won't have unintended side-effects is beyond what words can describe. And NO, YOU CAN __NOT__ USE A STUDY TO PREDICT THIS. No matter how "careful" you study will be you will NEVER be able to take in account all factors. It's enough that some random algae which we don't even know exists starts multiplying uncontrollable and destroys local sea-life. How will you predict this? You. Can. Not. Sad that "people of science and rigor" are incapable of understanding that there are things you simple can_not_predict_for. And all it takes is one such occurance and these idiotic "well meaning" scientists will destroy an entire eco system. But hey, "they did studies"...
  - jjoonathan 6y ago
    At some point you have to choose what to do, and that's always going to involve unknowns. For instance: 40 years ago, the USA could have chosen to continue building out nuclear power. Not accelerate the deployment, mind you, merely continue the roll out apace. If we had done so, we would be completely free of coal and gas today. Not maybe 30 years from now if we hustle, today. One could rage all day against the risks of another meltdown that this would entail, but when one considers that the "reasonable cool-headed alternative" we chose instead was to pump the atmosphere full of CO2, suddenly that doesn't seem too bad. It's easy to rant about the negatives of any given tradeoff, but for the rant to be meaningful, it has to be compared to the alternatives, which in this case are "do nothing, adapt to climate change" and "spend truly mind-boggling sums of money to accelerate renewable rollout." Neither of those is good. I'd personally prefer to spend the money, but I don't get to make this choice, and since "do nothing, wait and adapt" seems to be the default alternative, and it's chock-full of unknowns, it's hard for me to say that the geoengineers are significantly worse, even though their risk profile is, as you point out, steep.
greenonions 6y ago
There are so many lower hanging fruit for reducing emissions of and sequestering existing carbon. If you simply restored the majority of the US great plains back to a bison centered ecosystem instead of cattle, you'd produce a similar resource (bison meat) in large quantity while reducing emissions, and the tall grass would sequester an enormous amount of carbon.
- jkinudsjknds 6y ago
  Sounds dubious. It sounds anything but simple. Converting from cow meat to bison meat would certainly have different economics so who knows what would happen. Sequestering carbon in the grass would probably help, but let's not say "enormous" as if to imply that it would solve the problem. I don't have numbers and transitioning from cows to bisons could plausibly have some positive effects. But its hard to compare it to plans like messing with ocean chemistry in terms of scale.
- boxed 6y ago
  Would it though? I don't see how because if it did sequester a lot of carbon (not just a one time chunk but over time) then the world would have way less carbon in the atmosphere than it did before industrialization.
  - wongarsu 6y ago
    Most of the effect is just that plants are mostly made out of carbon, so having more plant mass means more carbon in plants and less in the atmosphere. It's the same for trees. It's a sink of fixed size, not a bottomless barrel we can dump infinite amounts of CO2 into. That doesn't make it useless though.
- 24gttghh 6y ago
  I was about to say most of the plains are used for growing corn and not grazing land but I was wrong, partly. Its mostly cropland in the Northern/Central plains, but mostly grazing/pasture land otherwise. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses/maps-and-state-rankings-of-major-land-uses.aspx https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses/maps-...
LatteLazy 6y ago
Our species has repeatedly been really clear: we're not going to do anything about climate change. Stop pretending lack of interest is lack of options.
- toiletfuneral 6y ago
  The state has forfeited responsibility for the well being of citizens in its devotion to corporate interests, and capital doesn't give a shit because it will always be more profitable to build enclaves for the rich than limit any production.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
  Eurpoe + common wealth + USA + Canada has seen declining CO2 per capita since ~2002, many of them earlier than that. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?tab=chart&xScale=linear&yScale=linear&stackMode=absolute&endpointsOnly=0&year=latest&time=earliest..2016&country=Europe~United%20States~Australia~New%20Zealand~Canada&region=World&Gas%20=CO%E2%82%82&Accounting%20=Production-based&Fuel%20=Total&Count%20=Per%20capita&Relative%20to%20world%20total%20= https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?tab=chart&xScale=li... Just because it's not enough and it's been slow doesn't mean it's nothing.
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    A few counter points: * rate of World co2 emissions continue to rise. * we don't just need rate to stop rising, we need rate to fall to pretty much zero. * and if we could magically get rates to stop rising, and fall to zero, tomorrow, we'd still have about 2 degrees of warming from all the emissions already up there. People have completely missed the point: the rate of growth of rate of emissions might have improved in some places. But the problem is total amount emitted. Oh, and you don't avert climate change with per capita cuts if population keeps growing. Which it will, till about 2100.
    - api 6y ago
      There is no chance of stopping this. The challenge is massive even if there were political will, and there is no political will. We need to plan for climate change as a near certainty and start preparing now.
dr_dshiv 6y ago
Seems to me that an all of the above strategy would let us learn the most. We are part of nature, so it wouldn't surprise me if we need to get good at cultivating these feedback loops...
aaron695 6y ago
This has been done, I think most people know this. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-... You can track down the 8 years of followup articles and research papers. There is no evidence it didn't work. There's evidence it did. The trick is, tie it to fishing and it might make a difference. Or it might just take pressure off fisheries. You have billions yet to eat more meat, so hurry up with your lab grown meat or start doing things like this, that also should get the same subsidies as things like solar power.

38 points by astrobase_go 6y ago

It seems more and more likely to me that the general approach to climate change is going to simply be adaptation. We'll have to figure out ways to live and grow food in a hotter world that has more dramatic weather events. I think this will be expensive and could tragically lead to the deaths of many people who cannot afford to live in this new world. If a large country with many poor people are faced with this situation, maybe it's likely that they might try one of these geoengineering efforts as a last resort? The environmental effects are unpredictable, but if it could save a lot of lives...

Ma8ee 6y ago
Yes, we will have to adapt. That doesn’t change the fact we also must try to slow and minimise it as much as is possible. Adapting to two degrees is probably an order of magnitude easier than adapting to four or five degrees. We rich westerners will most likely only be inconvenienced. We have our AC and we can afford more expensive food. If you live close to the coast or a river you might need to move. The greatest problem we will have to face is probably the huge waves of refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Not only from starvation, but from conflicts about e.g., water.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  The problem we face is the rise of Fascism in response to those waves, and the bad government and, most likely, war, always instigated by Fascists. It is already starting.
  - nix23 6y ago
    >always instigated by Fascists Not really, just look at the US..oil/money
    - ncmncm 6y ago
      You seem to be confused. A counterexample would be a Fascist government that did not instigate a war, given ample time.
      - nix23 6y ago
        >given ample time. That's the problem....any government instigate in a ware given enough time, i think your problem is that you have no clue what fascist means.
        ncmncm 6y ago
        You are still confused. Numerous governments have never instigated wars despite ample opportunities. Fascists do not need your defense.
  - Ma8ee 6y ago
    That is only one of the problems.
- nix23 6y ago
  >We rich westerners will most likely only be inconvenienced. For how many generation will that be?
JanSolo 6y ago
Adaptation will happen for sure. Here are some examples of things that we should expect to see in the coming years: * No more building in flood-plains or low-lying coastal regions. * Flood insurance in those areas will lose their subsidies and will become expensive. * Areas in Florida, Louisiana, etc will become poorer as those who can afford to relocate do so. * Farming will slowly move north; southern areas that are currently farms will dry out and become non-viable. * Alternative energy might take the place of farming in the south. Solar farms? Wind Turbines? * Inland cities will become more popular because of their reduced risk of climate-related events. Denver, Phoenix, Dallas, Washington, will likely all get net-positive migration. * Conversely, the big coastal cities will become more expensive and cause people to start leaving. NY, LA, San Francisco, Boston, etc.
X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
If you're interested in adaptation in food systems I really enjoyed The Fate of Food: What We'll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World. I'm currently working through Whole Earth Discipline which calls for work on three different fronts: Reduction (of emission), Adaptation (to unavoidable change) and Geoengineering (to prevent the worst of it). Without significant government ran/funded geoengineering projects we'll be living with at least ~1.5 C above pre-industrial levels. We'll need to do some adaptation as is.
- wahern 6y ago
  > The Fate of Food: What We'll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World. One of my favorite quotes in this vein is "We are eating bait and moving on to jellyfish and plankton", referring to overfishing and climate change changing Americans' seafood diet. From http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/30/local/la-me-ocean30jul30 http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/30/local/la-me-ocean30j.... Of course, many cultures have always eaten and enjoyed jellyfish, but that's beside the point. The ethnocentrism is what sells it to the conservative American audience.[1] ;) [1] Well, older conservative audience. Many younger conservatives grew up only eating trash fish, at best.
  - X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
    > Of course, many cultures have always eaten and enjoyed jellyfish From my brief search it looks like most edible jellyfish is sold heavily salted. Like higher than average beef jerky salty. You'd need to change preservation techniques to really use jellyfish a lot of your daily protein intake. Jellyfish: > Protein 6.67 g > Sodium, Na 2081 mg https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/396504/nutrients https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/396504/n... > Beef jerky > Protein 33.2 g > Sodium, Na 2081 mg > Those headed for the table have their tentacles cut off; it is their upper dome, dried and preserved in salt, which is used in cooking. These jellyfish arrive at the restaurant in stacks of parchment paper, doused in rock salt https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2006/jan/27/foodanddrink.features11 https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2006/jan/27/foodand...
    - 6y ago
aaron695 6y ago
> and could tragically lead to the deaths of many people who cannot afford to live in this new world. We don't care about the billions who can't afford to live in the current world. But we do care about the ones who can't afford to live in the new one! Why is this? It took a rich silicon valley dude to care about polio. But every layperson wants to destroy the current economy for future people. Being from the future they are super rich compared to us, like every new generation now, so perhaps they just are better at writing Twitter hash tags?

omginternets 6y ago

Every time I read something like this, my hubris alarm goes off. We couldn't even get trans-fats right, so I don't see how we're going to cover all the contingencies for something like this.

OneGuy123 6y ago
It's sad that this comment is downvoted. The saying that "the greediest capitalist oil driller won't destroy the planet not nearly as much as a 'well meaning' scientists" seems to be coming true. The arrogance that they believe that such a thing won't have unintended side-effects is beyond what words can describe. And NO, YOU CAN __NOT__ USE A STUDY TO PREDICT THIS. No matter how "careful" you study will be you will NEVER be able to take in account all factors. It's enough that some random algae which we don't even know exists starts multiplying uncontrollable and destroys local sea-life. How will you predict this? You. Can. Not. Sad that "people of science and rigor" are incapable of understanding that there are things you simple can_not_predict_for. And all it takes is one such occurance and these idiotic "well meaning" scientists will destroy an entire eco system. But hey, "they did studies"...
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  At some point you have to choose what to do, and that's always going to involve unknowns. For instance: 40 years ago, the USA could have chosen to continue building out nuclear power. Not accelerate the deployment, mind you, merely continue the roll out apace. If we had done so, we would be completely free of coal and gas today. Not maybe 30 years from now if we hustle, today. One could rage all day against the risks of another meltdown that this would entail, but when one considers that the "reasonable cool-headed alternative" we chose instead was to pump the atmosphere full of CO2, suddenly that doesn't seem too bad. It's easy to rant about the negatives of any given tradeoff, but for the rant to be meaningful, it has to be compared to the alternatives, which in this case are "do nothing, adapt to climate change" and "spend truly mind-boggling sums of money to accelerate renewable rollout." Neither of those is good. I'd personally prefer to spend the money, but I don't get to make this choice, and since "do nothing, wait and adapt" seems to be the default alternative, and it's chock-full of unknowns, it's hard for me to say that the geoengineers are significantly worse, even though their risk profile is, as you point out, steep.

greenonions 6y ago

There are so many lower hanging fruit for reducing emissions of and sequestering existing carbon. If you simply restored the majority of the US great plains back to a bison centered ecosystem instead of cattle, you'd produce a similar resource (bison meat) in large quantity while reducing emissions, and the tall grass would sequester an enormous amount of carbon.

jkinudsjknds 6y ago
Sounds dubious. It sounds anything but simple. Converting from cow meat to bison meat would certainly have different economics so who knows what would happen. Sequestering carbon in the grass would probably help, but let's not say "enormous" as if to imply that it would solve the problem. I don't have numbers and transitioning from cows to bisons could plausibly have some positive effects. But its hard to compare it to plans like messing with ocean chemistry in terms of scale.
boxed 6y ago
Would it though? I don't see how because if it did sequester a lot of carbon (not just a one time chunk but over time) then the world would have way less carbon in the atmosphere than it did before industrialization.
- wongarsu 6y ago
  Most of the effect is just that plants are mostly made out of carbon, so having more plant mass means more carbon in plants and less in the atmosphere. It's the same for trees. It's a sink of fixed size, not a bottomless barrel we can dump infinite amounts of CO2 into. That doesn't make it useless though.
24gttghh 6y ago
I was about to say most of the plains are used for growing corn and not grazing land but I was wrong, partly. Its mostly cropland in the Northern/Central plains, but mostly grazing/pasture land otherwise. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses/maps-and-state-rankings-of-major-land-uses.aspx https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses/maps-...

LatteLazy 6y ago

Our species has repeatedly been really clear: we're not going to do anything about climate change. Stop pretending lack of interest is lack of options.

toiletfuneral 6y ago
The state has forfeited responsibility for the well being of citizens in its devotion to corporate interests, and capital doesn't give a shit because it will always be more profitable to build enclaves for the rich than limit any production.
X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
Eurpoe + common wealth + USA + Canada has seen declining CO2 per capita since ~2002, many of them earlier than that. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?tab=chart&xScale=linear&yScale=linear&stackMode=absolute&endpointsOnly=0&year=latest&time=earliest..2016&country=Europe~United%20States~Australia~New%20Zealand~Canada&region=World&Gas%20=CO%E2%82%82&Accounting%20=Production-based&Fuel%20=Total&Count%20=Per%20capita&Relative%20to%20world%20total%20= https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?tab=chart&xScale=li... Just because it's not enough and it's been slow doesn't mean it's nothing.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  A few counter points: * rate of World co2 emissions continue to rise. * we don't just need rate to stop rising, we need rate to fall to pretty much zero. * and if we could magically get rates to stop rising, and fall to zero, tomorrow, we'd still have about 2 degrees of warming from all the emissions already up there. People have completely missed the point: the rate of growth of rate of emissions might have improved in some places. But the problem is total amount emitted. Oh, and you don't avert climate change with per capita cuts if population keeps growing. Which it will, till about 2100.
  - api 6y ago
    There is no chance of stopping this. The challenge is massive even if there were political will, and there is no political will. We need to plan for climate change as a near certainty and start preparing now.

dr_dshiv 6y ago

Seems to me that an all of the above strategy would let us learn the most. We are part of nature, so it wouldn't surprise me if we need to get good at cultivating these feedback loops...

aaron695 6y ago

This has been done, I think most people know this. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-... You can track down the 8 years of followup articles and research papers. There is no evidence it didn't work. There's evidence it did. The trick is, tie it to fishing and it might make a difference. Or it might just take pressure off fisheries. You have billions yet to eat more meat, so hurry up with your lab grown meat or start doing things like this, that also should get the same subsidies as things like solar power.