Ocean Fertilization redux… plus the politics of science

My last posting about Climate Change remediation got a lot of attention, positive and negative,  so let me emphasize: I do not consider any form of "geoengineering" to be a substitute for responsibly investing in energy efficiency and finding ways to maintain a great civilization without ruining our planet. Even if a few such methods are found that work well, without crackpot flaws and/or gruesome side effects, that won't let us off the hook from our shared and individual responsibilities, which include seeking alternate, sustainable forms of energy to replace the irresponsible spewing of greenhouse pollutants into our atmosphere. Those who have been lured into participating in a War on Science must be introduced to its value. But the cynical men who are financing this cult are enemies of humankind.

Only now… some additional insights. A variant on ocean fertilization has been proposed by my friend William Calvin, one of the smartest guys I know. Bill agrees with me that the best approach for geoengineering and partial remediation of carbon driven climate change would be to emulate and enhance the method that Nature herself already uses, to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere.  That means doing it via natural processes at-sea, forming carbon rich solids and letting these settle as sediments to the ocean bottom.  (While, as a side-benefit, stimulating new fisheries.)  See Calvin's Proposal: Emergency 20-year Drawdown of Excess CO2 via Push-Pull  Ocean Pumps.

Earlier we discussed the drawbacks of the bludgeon-like initial attempts at ocean fertilization, that have created crude plankton blooms by dumping iron powder into currents.  We also saw that care must be taken to make sure that (as when arid land is irrigated) the new zones of fecundity must be "well-drained" like the Grand Banks and Chile, and unlike the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, where "fecundity" can translate into  a poisoned morass of algae and jellyfish.  My conclusion: if you want to emulate the main life-process that removes CO2 from the air, do it by lifting submerged nutrients to higher, sun-lit realms, exactly as Nature does it.  Several methods have been proposed and I showed a couple of them way back in in EARTH (1989).

Let me pause to add that there are non-living process that do the same thing, in parallel.  Even more effective at drawing down atmospheric CO2 is the weathering of continental rocks by the rain cycle, washing silicates to sea via river estuaries, reacting and combining with dissolved carbon and sealing them away in sediments without intervention by biology. (Indeed, this is the principal driver of the "Gala Balance" that makes a natural ocean world self-regulating.)  I have never seen any proposals to expand continental, river-carried weathering… though I imagine a lot of dust will go to sea if we continue to spread deserts… or if desertification results in nuclear war.

But let's get back to Bill Calvin's concept.  He starts with what I've been pushing… systems that emulate natural upwellings by bringing up nutrients from below, using either windmills or wave powered systems.  (Have a look: some are very clever: especially using 3000 abandoned oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.)

He then deals with a serious problem, that most of the CO2 sequestered by a plankton bloom does not either sink or feed fish, but simply returns to the air after the plankton dies.  Calvin solves this by having another windmill-powered tube situated down-current from the upwelling one.  This second one pumps the carbon rich surface water back down again.  I'll let him explain:

Calvin's push-pull pumps:  "An easy-to-visualize method to do push-pull pumps uses floating windmills. Long pipes hang 15 to 30 stories down into the slowly moving depths. One windmill operates traditionally, pulling deep water up to the surface.  The nutrients in this cold water create a sustained bloom of algae (and algae thrive in cooler water). The other windmill pump pushes the enriched surface water down to where it cannot resurface for millennia. Pumping down stores the carbon in the brand-new algae as well as canceling out whatever carbon dioxide was first pulled up from below the thermocline. That’s the first big payoff from going with push-pull pumps."

"Even more importantly, it sinks the 240x larger amounts of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from the feces and cell debris. (Algaculture throws out the dissolved part of their organic crop.) DOC ordinarily becomes carbon dioxide within a week or two and then escapes into the air as winds stir the surface layer. Stashing it as well is the second big step up in efficiency achieved by push-pull pumps."

These things merit discussion.  Do have a closer look.  Because reducing CO2 at the source will no longer suffice.  We have to push for that!  But it will take more.

See my article: Defining Climate "Deniers" and "Skeptics." Without any doubt it is possible to be a skeptic who helps science by critiquing the flaws in any standard model. Such skepticism, propelled by curiosity and the natural competitiveness of science (indeed, science is the most ferociously competitive of all human endeavors) is natural and wholesome.  Alas, 95% of those calling themselves "climate skeptics" do not fit this description.  Their stance is driven by political loyalties and participation in an ever-deepening War on Science and everything that it stands for. And the worst example of all is...

== Politics and Science ==

The Science Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives -- continuing its almost blemish-free record of jibbering inanity, with members from the majority party almost universally unqualified and propelled by fanatical dogmas.  Take Mississippi Republican Rep. Steven Palazzo, who chairs the Space Subcommittee. His revision of the Administration's NASA budget request would slash the requested Earth science budget by a third (from about $1.8 billion to $1.2 billion) next year.  This from the party that proclaims "we need more research!" in order to determine whether human activity is promoting climate change and global warming.

(This year's Fox-declared dogma is to backpedal and admit (at last) that major global warming is obviously taking place, but continuing to declare human causes to be "unproved." And further proclaiming that lemming-herd-like scientists are all cowardly-timid yelpers after teensy grants. Even though half of all climate researchers are doing great, earning nearly all of their funds from perfectly safe research into weather prediction, having accomplished the spectacular feat of transforming the old, two hour weather report into a ten day miracle. Geniuses, chivvied by their opposites.)

Keeping true to form, the targeted slashing of science continues. The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which supports the development and commercialization of new energy technologies, would receive $50 million, $215 million — or 81 percent — less than what was enacted in fiscal 2013.

This is not the science-loving GOP of 1980, but some aberration that has sabotaged Earth science for twenty consistent years. Indeed, they several times tried to remove Earth observation and ocean/climate studies from the mission statements of both NASA and NOAA.  Can any modern person rationalize this?  Or convince himself/herself that this has anything to do with "conservatism" anymore?

Read also how the Space Subcommittee Republicans demand that funds be shifted away from asteroidal research, which offers the possibility of accessing vast wealth and resources, -- a new Gold-Platinum Rush in space -- while providing a useful intermediate mission for astronauts to develop deep space skills.  Instead they prefer an utterly pointless return to the sterile-useless-heavy Moon, and then armwave talk of a Mars Mission that this generation is nowhere near ready to even design.

Who - on Earth or anywhere - would try so hard to ALWAYS be wrong?

== Science Miscellany ==

Astronomers from 11 different institutions in the UK have joined forces to hunt for alien life, setting up a network to coordinate their activity. The UK SETI Research Network will fund research that considers new ways to find extraterrestrial intelligence. The group will also buy listening time on radio telescopes.

NASA image shows nearly ice-free Alaska on a clear day.

NASA seeks backyard astronomers to help chart asteroids.

A telescope for your eye: new contact lens allows user to switch between magnified and normal vision.

An interesting article reviewing the early days when the discoverers of pulsars first thought that the signals might be coming from Little Green Men.

Wearable computers for soldiers could stop deaths by friendly fire.

Cool images of sand reacting to sound at varied frequencies.

==And Finally==

Striking correlation between infection and mood disorders: Researchers have found that every third person who is diagnosed for the first time with a mood disorder had been admitted to hospital with an infection prior to the diagnosis. That notion adds another facet to the "hygiene hypothesis" that links a variety of autoimmune conditions to an inflammatory response caused by the loss of healthy bacteria in the gut.

Changes to the English language so subtle you don't notice; i.e. from "they started to walk" to "they started walking."

"Standard IQ tests are problematic on many levels — not least, because they do very little to tell us about the quality of our thinking. Looking to overcome this oversight, psychologist Keith Stanovich has started to work on the first-ever Rationality Quotient test." An interview that forges into deep territory, revealing just how difficult it is for humans to do the thing we are most proud-of.

The Science of Climate and Geo-engineering… and more

On June 18 I joined a blue ribbon panel (via Google Hangout) on the topic of Reinventing Climate Management: Staring Down the Possibility of Geoengineering, led by scenario thinker Jamais Cascio, author of the book Hacking the Earth: Understanding Geoengineering. He moderated a terrific group of scientists and other innovators (plus me… for comic relief I guess) wrestling with this issue, joined by visitors from the web with questions and ideas.

Managing the climate in the face of global warming is a wicked problem that requires getting almost every independent nation to coordinate. What would a system of global governance look like that's up to the true challenges ahead? And how do we start thinking about whether we need to take more desperate steps in the form of geoengineering?

I came away from the discussion convinced, yet again, that some things merit much closer examination and experimentation.  Out of all of the ideas that have been raised for either removing carbon from the atmosphere or reducing the sunlight that feeds the greenhouse, only one would attempt to emulate nature's own process for removing CO2, the way by far the largest amount has already been removed -- through chemical and biological sequestration in the open ocean. That proposal is Ocean Fertilization.

Yes, yes we have all read about silly, half-baked "experiments" in which poorly instrumented boats dumped tons of iron dust into ocean currents. These created plankton blooms, all right, but also questionable after-effects. They did not get very good press.  And they poisoned the well - so to speak - for more intelligent proposals that would more closely emulate what Nature, herself does.

And if anyone gets tentative rights to "speak for Mother Nature" it would be James Lovelock, author of the Gaia hypothesis.  With Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum in London, Lovelock proposed trying an option that would place vertical pipes some 200 meters long in the sea to pump nutrient-rich water from depth to the surface, thus enhancing the growth of algae in the upper ocean. The algae, which are key in transporting carbon dioxide to the deep sea and producing dimethyl sulphide involved in the formation of sunlight-reflecting clouds, should help to prevent further warming. According to his note in Nature: 

"Although fertilizing the ocean with iron as a way of stimulating algal growth is being considered, the use of pipes to use the ocean’s existing nutrients as fertilizer is certainly novel."

Well… novel? Except that ocean bi-layer nutrient mixing was shown to readers way back in my novel EARTH (1989).  Our friend, The Economist's Oliver Morton, wrote an extensive blog on the Lovelock/Rapely proposal -- which may get funding from the Gates Foundation for preliminary research.  And Morton fairly describes some of the critics, as well:

“The concept is flawed,” says Scott Doney, a marine chemist at WHOI. He says it neglects the fact that deeper waters with high nutrients also generally contain a lot of dissolved inorganic carbon, including dissolved CO₂. Bringing these waters to the lower pressures of the surface would result in the CO₂ bubbling out into the air."

Well, then shouldn't we look into it and find out?

Might this concept be compatible with Nathan Myhrvold’s innovation… pumping warm surface water below the thermocline?  As reported by Oliver Morton, the system would be something a bit like a floating paddling pool with a long pipe dangling down from its centre. Because there will be waves outside the pool but not inside, water will splash in over its edge but not out, and so the water level inside the pool is higher than the level outside the pool, providing the downward force.  A company called Atmocean has in fact built prototype systems which aim to do it in almost exactly the opposite way to the Searete patents, by using wave power to pump cool water up, but the effect would be the same, spreading nutrients from below to where the sunlight is…

…exactly what happens in the world's greatest fisheries, off Chile, the Grand Banks and Antarctica. Why do extra nutrients spur fecundity and ocean health in those places, but not in "dying seas" that suffer from eutrification (death by excess fertilizing runoff from agriculture), like the Gulf of Mexico, the Mediterranean and especially the Black Sea?  Well… just look at them!  The difference should be obvious to the eye. The choked seas do not "drain well."

Let's make a parallel.  It is said that ninety percent of the oceans are "desert" realms where very little lives, because of lack of nutrients to feed a food chain… mostly the stuff that you find in "dirt." Now turn back onto the continents.  What do we sometimes do to make deserts bloom?  Onland we irrigated,  bringing water to soil.  At sea the proposal is to bring "soil" to the water in a sense. (The mouths of most river systems are also generally fecund.)

Ah, you answer, but hasn't irrigation been a mixed blessing, and often a downright curse? Yes! Our ancestors ruined the so-called "Fertile Crescent" by pouring river water over fields, allowing salts and toxic metals to accumulate until the land died.  But this did not happen everywhere.  Many regions -- e.g. the Ganges valley and the Yangtze -- have been heavily irrigated for thousands of years without suffering desertification. Again, the reason should be eye-obvious: Those river valleys had good drainage, allowing salts to be washed away by monsoons.

The Gulf Stream, the Antarctic Current, and the fisheries near Chile are not enclosed seas -- they flow.  So ocean fertilization experiments should start where strong currents can disperse the plankton blooms.  So let's try some of the more natural-like layer mixing or bottom stirring proposals. And let's see if we can make another Grand Banks somewhere.

== Another concept ==

A truly ambitious concept for ocean fertilization by layer mixing would go beyond those mentioned above.  It would use pipes more than 1000 meters long and power them by planting the bottom end right atop an oceanic hydrothermal (volcanic) vent!  

A thousand meters?  Atop a volcanic vent?  Well… I think we should try some simpler mixing methods, first.

== More factors ==

Again, Oliver Morton (in private correspondence) explained why  the first recourse in ocean fert has always been iron.: "Iron is interesting because its a *micro*nutrient. That gives it great stoichiometry -- you can see in the literature estimates of C:Fe ratios of around 100,000:1, IIRC. That gets you a lot of C for a tonne of Fe. As I understood it you were suggesting mobilising phosphorous reserves in ocean sediments or deepwater. For phosphate fertilizaton the ratio is 106:1 -- the ideal Redfield ratio of C to P in marine biomass. The practical ratio, given losses, would almost certainly be a lot less; for iron it is more than 10 times less. If that were true for macronutrient fertilization, you'd get only a few tonnes of C stored for every tonne of P mobilized. There have to be better ways of getting rid of a tonne of C than that. You might do better -- 10 tonnes C, maybe 30? But that still means a vast mass-moving operation to work at the desired gigatonne C level, because you would have to mobiliza a lot of tonnes of sediment or bottom water to deliver one tonne of P. This is a very different and more extensive infrastructure than needed for iron fertilization."   (See Morton's survey of geoengineering schemes in Nature: Climate Crunch: Great White Hope .)

Wow.  Okay. Look, I never doubted than iron fertilization was efficient, compared to ocean bottom stirring, or bi-layer mixing.  What I maintain is that not enough attention has been paid to studying the most effective parts of the ocean - e.g. the Grand Banks and Chile and Antarctica -- to determine if they are also big net carbon sinks, as well as fantastic fisheries.  It does not seem to have occurred to anyone that there might be other places on Earth that have almost the right conditions and that might be tipped into similar fecundity with just a little help. 

Instead, the reflex is to assume that all meddling is always bad, all the time.  Indeed, the metaphor I used was irrigation and that was the very reflex. We all know what shortsighted irrigation did to the Fertile Crescent... and that metaphor makes us ignore the lessons of other watersheds that remained productive and healthy for 4000 years.  Again, this is the main difference between Chile, Labrador, Antarctica... and the eutrophic dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and Mediterranean and Black Sea.

To my knowledge, this consideration was not handled well in most of the iron experiments.

Continue to Part 2 of Ocean Fertilization, discussing Push-Pull Ocean Pumps.

== More using natural forces: Solar Towers ==

Some great ideas have been around for a long time.  Way back in 1989 I talked about desert solar towers that use temperature differentials to suck greenhouse-heated air past turbines, generating electricity for free. A test unit was built in Spain 10 years ago.  

Now plans are underway for a 2015 solar tower in Arizona of mammoth proportions.

== Climate Miscellany ==

Back to Oliver Morton again… his rather skeptical look at more geoengineering schemes, especially cloud-creation.

A fascinating survey of how past climate changes, especially in the 17th century, severely affected societies and people worldwide, in The Inevitable Climate Catastrophe by Geoffrey Parker on The Chronicle.

Some convincing charts about climate change. Plus see my earlier posting: Arguing with your crazy uncle about Climate Change.

Somebody go read this and review it for us here?  The Age of Global Warming: A History by Rupert Darwall.

==  Plus Science Miscellany! ==

With three terrestrial-mass planets in the habitable zone of this small, red star (they would all be tidal locked facing their sun), "the likelihood of one of them actually being habitable is tremendous." Just 22 light years away.

Interstellar Visioneers and a limitless future: Read a review on Centauri Dreams of UCSB Professor W. Patrick McCray's new book called The Visioneers: How A Group of Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnologies and a Limitless Future on the lives of  Gerard O'Neill and Eric Drexler, and how their innovative visions and research into space colonies and nanotechnologies transformed society -- and shaped our future.

Anthropologists see evidence that developing the ability to throw well was a major evolutionary driver.  Something that Bill Calvin hypothesized 20 + years ago in The Throwing Madonna: Essays on the Brain.  Indeed, throwing is one of our many prodigious skills that made us formidable and scary, even discounting "intelligence."

A fascinating (if highbrow) appraisal of the radical roots of the Enlightenment. 

John Hodgman narrates a Cory Doctorow animated short about NSA spies.

== call my agent… quick! ==

Past Brain Activation Revealed in Scans: "What if experts could dig into the brain, like archaeologists, and uncover the history of past experiences? This ability might reveal what makes each of us a unique individual, and it could enable the objective diagnosis of a wide range of neuropsychological diseases. New research at the Weizmann Institute hints that such a scenario is within the realm of possibility: It shows that spontaneous waves of neuronal activity in the brain bear the imprints of earlier events for at least 24 hours after the experience has taken place."