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Climate Change is also Ocean Change

Many concerns are being voiced with regard to the application of directed efforts to help grow plants in oceans for the purpose of biomass carbon sequestration. Some of those concerns that have been made to us include the following:

Ocean Change is also Climate Change

To really understand how Ocean Change might affect climate we have to keep in mind some important aspects of context.

Here are some excerpts from dialog between the program presenter and executive producer Steve Curwood and their reporter Wendy Williams. The LOE web site has a transcript of the program.

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They say!

Sound Science or Fertilization Folly?

CURWOOD: Welcome to Living on Earth. I'm Steve Curwood. Russ George is a California businessman with a big idea. You give him some money, and he'll seed the ocean with iron filings. The iron will stimulate phytoplankton growth which, in turn, will take carbon out of the atmosphere and help you mitigate your contribution to global warming. Mr. George's idea is one of a number of business plans springing up as demand for carbon trading mechanisms grows. And Russ George, and his foundation, Planktos, are causing quite a stir. Nature magazine, the BBC, and major newspapers have all touted his business venture. But behind the media hoopla, there's a caveat, according to journalist Wendy Williams. In a report prepared for the Fund for Investigative Journalism, she says this carbon trading scheme is not backed up by much in the way of credible science. Wendy Williams joins us now.

Wendy, first tell me what do Mr. George's tiny phytoplankton have to do with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

WILLIAMS: Well, the interesting thing about phytoplankton is that they are very, very small, one cell, and they are plant-like. They take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere...

CURWOOD: So, how does iron fit into all of this?

WILLIAMS: ... An oceanographer named John Martin from the west coast, came along at the beginning of the 1990s and theorized that iron was the limiting factor. All of us need iron in order to have cellular processes operate in us, whether we're human beings, animals, or plants.

CURWOOD: But only tiny amounts of iron.

WILLIAMS: Only tiny, tiny trace amounts of iron....

CURWOOD: So, the idea is that iron somehow would make more phytoplankton?

CURWOOD: What do scientists say about this? How practical do they say this scheme might be to use iron filings to effect climate change?

WILLIAMS: Initially, three or four years ago, there were some leading oceanographers that were interested in the idea. It did look, from the research that had been done so far, as though seeding the oceans and growing phytoplankton could, in fact, help with global climate change. 

In the last couple of months, particularly over the last year, many of those scientists have come to say that they really don't think it's a very efficacious idea. It turns out that the amount of iron that you would need, and the amount of phytoplankton that you would have to grow, would be so considerable that it's just not practical.

CURWOOD: What would this do to the biology of the ocean?

WILLIAMS: The scientists that I've spoken with have a number of concerns about how the biology of the ocean could be affected. 

Inducing large scale phytoplankton blooms in the ocean could deplete the ocean of oxygen which is needed by other organisms that live in the ocean. 

It could create gaseous effects which might be released back into the atmosphere and heat up the atmosphere, instead of cool it off.  

It could upset the food chain in the ocean so that other organisms that we hadn't expected to be there and that really don't belong there might suddenly show up. It could be that by adding iron to certain parts of the ocean, we might be encouraging the wrong kinds of phytoplankton to live in the ocean, rather than the kinds of phytoplankton that normally live there. We don't actually know.

CURWOOD: One thing that you said that really intrigued me, the notion that this could perhaps make global warming worse?

WILLIAMS: Well, there is some science now to show that it could have the reverse effect. John Martin was playing around and said a half a tanker of iron will bring you the Ice Age, but some science actually researching that idea has shown that in some cases it could heat up the climate.  

Large phytoplankton blooms may, in fact, absorb sunlight from the sky, and then may heat up the ocean, which, of course, could heat up the climate. It could have all kinds of effects that we can't foresee. 

CURWOOD: So, what else have we learned from real studies of trying to seed the ocean with iron filings, scientific studies?

WILLIAMS: Well, researchers have learned a lot of very profitable things. And every one that I spoke with, all of the researchers with whom I spoke were very enthusiastic about being allowed to go on to continue to do these kinds of small scale studies. They're learning all about carbon pumps. They're learning about ocean circulation. They need to know much, much more about phytoplankton. Phytoplankton is sort of a generic name for a number of different organisms, and we understand very little about them, why they're in the ocean, where they go, who eats them, who eats the ones that ate them. And what researchers are doing now is using this as a kind of tool in order to learn a lot more.

CURWOOD: Now, as I understand it, there is some interest in large-scale iron fertilization, iron ocean fertilization projects. Who is interested in promoting such things?

WILLIAMS: There have been several companies that initially thought that it would be a good idea. Seven different patents to date have been taken out on this as a way to sell carbon credits that might or might not be tradable on the international market. Most of them are waiting to see. I went out to California in January to talk with someone who already is out there marketing it.

CURWOOD: What's going on there?

WILLIAMS: Well, I visited with a very nice man named Russ George, who has a website, and tells people that if they want to deal with the carbon that they themselves have helped to put in the atmosphere, they can send him a certain amount of money and he'll seed the ocean with iron for them, grow the phytoplankton, and they will have dealt with their personal carbon obligations that way.

CURWOOD: In fact, do you think folks are going to get the deal that they're looking for?

WILLIAMS: Right now, there's no science that says they will. The science, basically, has panned out to say that that will not occur.

CURWOOD: Now, who oversees what folks like Mr. George and other entrepreneurs are doing?

WILLIAMS: That's one of the problems right now that we're dealing with as a nation and as a world. By not signing the Kyoto Treaty, we are opting out of the supervisory situation which the Kyoto rules are creating, even as we speak. Right now, committees under the supervision of Kyoto are working out what kinds of carbon sequestration ideas are good and healthy for the planet, and they're discarding the ones that they don't think will be useful, and that they don't think will accomplish climate mitigation.

We take strong exception to LOE ignoring our public statements and published materials that clearly state our mission and method. LOE presents an opinionated, judgmental, and fictional tale bereft of sound science but full of insult and innuendo.

You be the judge of who provides "Sound science for the Planet."

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We Say!

Just for starters we have to assume that Mr. Curwood visited the Planktos Foundation website prior to the broadcast and via our Real Audio links listened to our early interviews on the BBC and NPR New York. If he did so he must have noticed our mission statement that is prominent throughout the site and states clearly that it is our intent to engage in research on this important topic so that a fuller understanding will be at hand. We publish this mission and restate it during interviews. We do so consistently so that such understanding might be applied to decisions about whether and to what extent iron plankton stimulation might be employed at some time in the future. 

Of course merely reporting on the work of a small research organization doesn't make very good expose style radio copy and in that light it is easy to understand why Mr. Curwood choose to employ the tabloid journalistic device of eschewing what we say and instead attempt to brand and discredit our work by reducing it to.....

"you give him money, and he'll seed the ocean with iron filings..." 

Such a statement does indeed sting us to our environmentalist roots as it is intended to do. It also demeans our work and suggests it is all rather mercenary. It is first rate tabloid journalism. It most certainly is not honest reporting.

He goes on to report that the work of Planktos is "not backed up by much in the way of credible science." 

What can we say, this statement seems to reveal that LOE has neither looked over Planktos Web Site nor referred to the many much kinder and gentler to say nothing of more reputable reports on our work.  Certainly we don't practice the kind of science Mr.Curwood and LOE do so maybe by their standard we would be guilty of not being backed by their kind of science. Of course then again having our work featured in the Journal Nature in January 2003 carries a little weight amongst our scientific peers.

No issue here we at least agree on what phyto-plankton are.

You can read more about the late great John Martin on NASA's website at

 http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Giants/Martin/ 

Indeed tiny is the word. Iron occurs in the open ocean, that is those parts of the ocean far out to sea, at levels of a few parts per trillion. This level of iron supports the bare minimum requirement for ocean plants to survive. Episodically more iron arrives as a result of terrestrial dust that blows off the land and in some cases derives from deep water upwelling. When this iron arrives in the surface waters as it does with great frequency the phytoplankton of the ocean bloom. This is the nature of ocean plants which are largely dependent on dust blown iron ore (magnetite and hematite) from the land and have evolved a bloom response nature to do so.

The idea that we use iron filings makes it all sound rather simplistic and artificial. Further to say this is of course factually and scientifically misleading. Iron filings would sink immediately out of the surface waters and have no effect. Further iron filings are not what the ocean plants have evolved to make use of, they evolved to use iron ore dust, otherwise known as as the red coloring in everyday dirt. Planktos has used iron ore (magnetite and hematite) in some of its experiments. One of our contributions to science is that and we use this material in a submicron particle size, where the particles are so small that the sink rate is measured in weeks and months as opposed to minutes. Our material is the very same natural iron that the ocean plants receive from dust storms only in much smaller particles. One advantage of such small particles is that they linger so long in the surface waters that the iron is slowly made biologically available. 

LOE do not seem to have the ability to report what we use accurately nor do they appear to have any inclination in reporting accurately what we do.

As one reads through the LOE materials one begins to find all the characteristics of determined spin mastering by LOE. Facts don't seem to be nearly as important as choosing to use a pejorative word or twisting facts with a clever turn of phrase.

"... many of those scientists have come to say that they really don't think it's a very efficacious idea. 

Interest in the role of iron in the worlds oceans and the potential for it to be a climate change mitigation tool began in the late 1980's. It was a mature idea in 1989 when John Martin presented it at ocean conferences. Support was already so great that funding was beginning to flow to finance the foundational science needed to perform lab scale experiments. Funding for open ocean experiments led by Prof. Martin were soon to come from major research agencies in the USA and abroad with the first taking place in the early 1990's but not before John died of cancer. However his colleagues continued his work and now perhaps a dozen ocean experiments have taken place with many more funded and planned for the near future.

LOE continues on the path that suggests that this idea ought to be considered in their apparent context that being the question of whether iron and phytoplankton offer a singular solution to global climate change. If total cure is not at hand they then try to make the point that it "is not a very efficacious idea and just not practical based on how much phytoplankton needs to be grown"  

These un-named scientists that LOE cites and recites with the phrase "The scientists that I've spoken with" have some rather contentious concerns. It's a well established tabloid journalism technique to have contentious concerns not attributable to real identifiable people but rather invoke the collective wisdom of un-named experts. This sort of shoddy journalism is the very reason that scientific journals like the Journal Nature with their penchant for reference to specific work exist. 

Let's look at these "number of concerns about how the biology of the ocean could be affected." 

First - "Deplete the ocean of oxygen ...."

In fact ocean plankton blooms of stupendous size thousands of times larger than any ocean iron experiment yet performed or proposed occur frequently in all of the oceans of the world. You can view images of many such natural plankton blooms throughout the Planktos Web Site or by Googling the Internet.

 The study of such blooms is neither new nor without substantial detail thoroughly reported upon in over a century of ocean science literature. IN FACT such oxygen depletion has not been reported of blooms that occur in iron limited regions of the worlds oceans. Just how the folks at LOE can justify raising a cry of alarm over a such a purely speculated effect when over a hundred years of ocean science shows no such phenomena has been observed is a stretch, it certainly is not sound science. 

Next - "create gaseous effects which might be released back into the atmosphere and heat up the atmosphere, instead of cool it off.".

OK this is the story of DMS (dimethylsulfides). There are indeed greenhouse gases that living plants release both at sea and on land. Some phytoplankton do release DMS but the fact is that the issue here is made Sound Science when one understands the and provides the context. The reality is that we know that iron depleted oceans emit more of DMS, the opposite of what LOE reports in its speculation that iron enriched oceans might emit more DMS.  If you search the net on Google using the term dimethylsulfide and phytoplankton as the search terms you will find references to the following paper link

 http://saga.pmel.noaa.gov/underwaydms/why.html

This paper tells how in the North Pacific ocean severe iron limitation that is becoming more and more limited is shown to be producing a species shift to species like E.hux. One characteristic of this species which has been blooming in recent years in never before seen amounts and is producing greater emission of DMS. This is exactly the reverse of what the "Sound science for the planet" folks at LOE have stated but hey who pays attention that closely to details on shock (shlock) radio.

Next - Adding iron might result in species shifts in the natural ocean phytoplankton community.  "so that other organisms that we hadn't expected to be there and that really don't belong there might suddenly show up."

As we can see from the story of the DMS such species shifts are already well underway due in substantial part to the effects of global climate change and other factors such as changes in agricultural methods that preserve topsoil and reduce iron carrying dust transfer from land to sea.  Adding iron to forest sized patches of the North Pacific might well qualify it as the cure not the cause of such effects. 

To carry further our expose' of this pattern of perfectly backward science being presented by LOE as "sound science for the planet" lets continue.

Next - LOE states that "

Large phytoplankton blooms may, in fact, absorb sunlight from the sky, and then may heat up the ocean, which, of course, could heat up the climate. It could have all kinds of effects that we can't foresee."  

Let us tackle this notion from two angles. By basic first principals physics we know that a very clear ocean, meaning one with very little in it, e.g. sparse phytoplankton, offers less particulate matter to reflect sunlight back into space. Hence the clearer the water the more perfect absorber of the suns energy it is - NOT the opposite as LOE presents. In clear water the sunlight simply penetrates into the deep until all of it's energy is absorbed. As phytoplankton grows in the ocean it provides particulate materials that reflects more sunlight and heat, this is known as albedo in ocean science lingo. Anyone can do a quick Google of the Internet entering albedo and phytoplankton as the search terms and find countless references showing that phytoplankton blooms have been shown to reflect more sunlight and cool the ocean. Here is but one of those Googled references

http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/ceres/STM/2001_01/Jin_Zhonghai.pdf   

But as we have shown LOE clearly has not interest in simple fact checking. When LOE has an idea they want to use to sell their program they just say whatever it takes to support that claim. Of course the have the famous Dr. Some Scientist and colleagues to back up their presentation.

To make matters all the worse LOE adds the following stinger ending to their paragraph - "it could have all kinds of effects that we can't foresee."  

This sort of statement is meant only to unsettle the listener or reader and is of course a political comment and not characteristic of legitimate journalism. No one can refute the threat from "all kinds of effects that we can't foresee."  

Indeed LOE has gotten it right here this topic is perhaps the most studied and popular of topics in modern ocean science. Vast resources are being provided from scientific organizations around the world to study the influence of micro-nutrients on ocean ecosystems. While some academics would have all research flow through their guild guarded gates this is not the way of the world. Major corporations who are proactive on searching for climate change solutions are participating. Research teams like Planktos have a role, as do for profit entrepreneurs who are investing private funds to seek such solutions. No reputable organization has claimed or suggested that any one solution to global climate change is capable of solving the problem. 

The world is already well on its way to global climate change which is also changing the nature of the worlds oceans. The most dramatic change the oceans are likely to see is being brought on by rising CO2 levels in the global atmospheric/ocean carbon cycle. This is already changing the temperature of the Arctic and Antarctic seas and the speciation in those seas as well as oceans around the world. 

Some would like to suggest that the ocean is a last great wild frontier  that man has not yet changed and that if we only leave it alone all will be well.  This is simply not the case. The oceans are changing dramatically even drastically and we can no longer simply say that everything will be fine if we humans just leave it alone.

The notion that iron additions to the ocean need to be comprehensive and constant to "make a contribution" is sheer nonsense. People have accepted that solutions to global climate change that are as simple as one person planting one tree is not only a useful but worthy contribution. Forests all over the world are being planted with funds provided by corporations, governments, and individuals who want to help reduce the atmospheric CO2 levels. 

Planktos supports the idea that ocean forests much like forests on land will sequester biomass carbon in an effective fashion. Certainly the sequestration of carbon by ocean forests is more long lived than sequestration of carbon by forests on land. The ocean forest while a living plant community like a terrestrial forest is also different in many ways. Ocean Phytoplankton has never had the need to organize it's cells into great collectives, read Trees, that plant cells on land have had to do. They evolved and survive by conforming to a different set of conditions that have led to the ocean forest having a life cycle of days instead of centuries. When we grow a forest on land we commit that land to forest for a century or more. When we grow an ocean forest of the same size we commit that forest sized patch of ocean for a matter of perhaps 60 days. 

Plants whether on land or at sea grow in a rather similar fashion. They take up CO2 and bind it with energy from the sun to produce plant tissues. The rate at which this occurs is readily measured and quantified and thus the utility of this effect is readily verified. In the world today carbon forests are a commodity that people are willing to pay to have planted, measured, and verified so that the global climate change mitigation effect can be certified. The certificates that are produced by this work are being traded experimentally to discover whether this will be one of the tools that will help us limit the effects of global climate change. Whether a carbon forest is growing on land or in the ocean it is still a forest of plants.

This is simply a preposterous statement that anyone with an inclination to read the copious literature in this field will discover. A good place to start is right here on the Planktos Web site. Another way to get a fast education in this field is to simply Google the Internet/

We think the question should be who oversees who. Surely Mr. Curwood and his team who proclaim to provide "sound science for the planet" but as we have shown here do nothing of the sort should be subject to some oversight. They have fabricated a tale that postures as science and criticizes the people and the work of Planktos and many others who pursue the path of seeking to help discover possible tools to help mitigation global climate change. 

This presentation of the Kyoto treaty as being the singular method for countries to work on global climate change is very odd. No country that has signed the Kyoto treaty has implemented legislation to date that is as potent as that implemented by many states. 

"They don't think will accomplish climate mitigation." No singular mitigation tool will solve the juggernaut scale problem that global climate change present nor will any singular political legislative tool suffice. We must address this crisis by any and every means at our disposal.

May 10, 2002

Dear Planktos,

I cannot support the objectives of your organization.

While I do accept that plankton is a natural resource that should be protected, I have fundamental objections to artificial stimulation of its growth with the objective of generating carbon credits. Preservation of the world's plankton resources should be part of a larger drive to conserve our fishstocks, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce polluting emissions into our oceans. The preservation of plankton should under no circumstances be used to generate credits to offset greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere.

Having participated in the international climate change negotiations, I've seen the unfortunate abuse of sequestration by key developed countries as a means to avoid their responsibility to tackle climate change at its true source - in particular human energy consumption.

Reducing rather than sequestering emissions is the only way to solve climate change in the long term. Finding short-term other solutions, in particular through sequestration generating credits to offset emissions, will only postpone the emission reductions and development of new technologies that we need to stop climate change in the longer term.

Best regards,

Jürgen Lefevere

Programme Director, Climate Change
Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development
London, UK

Historical observation of plankton blooms especially those that occur far out to sea as opposed to in confined coastal regions is that claims of possible Eutrophication and mass die offs of marine life are not supported by the historical evidence. In what we believe the preferred embodiment of ocean biomass carbon sequestration projects episodic treatment of forest sized patches of ocean would produce the desired effect. By mimicking Mother Nature in both the iron component added and the brief episodic nature of the additions there is no evidence based reason to believe that blooms so produced would lead to the speculated eutrophication effect. As well such projects would require an intensive monitoring program  in order that biomass production and distribution is well and accurately accounted for. If any hint of problems might arise one would have the ability to modify protocols to avoid this getting out of hand. 

Most importantly the only way we might ever have a real answer to this question is to conduct the kind of research program proposed by Planktos.

Growing plankton in the ocean won't alone save the world from climate change so why do it at all. 

Biomass carbon sequestration is becoming a feature in emission management schemes around the world. Forestry projects are the most prominent of these programs and new forests are being planted to scrub CO₂ from the atmosphere and sequester that biomass carbon in trees. In addition stable grasslands are also being created for the same purpose of biomass carbon sequestration. 

Not all of earths land mass is suitable for biomass carbon sequestration and of course no one proposes to use the whole of earths land mass for such efforts. 

Since the world is 2/3's ocean and those oceans also grow abundant plant life it is logical to presume that some regions of the worlds oceans, just as some regions of the worlds land mass, is suited to encouraging plant growth for the purpose of biomass carbon production. Indeed since the size of the worlds oceans are so great one might imagine that compared to land use for such purposes a much small percentage of the oceans might be allocated for this use. 

Ocean science is a mature science with at least two centuries of scientific observation forming the foundation for our understanding of the ocean environment. We are certainly not perfectly knowledgeable but we do have good foundations.

We now know that ocean phyto-plankton in much of the worlds oceans is dramatically growth limited by the short supply of key micro-nutrients with iron being perhaps the most important of these. In this environment where iron is in high demand and short supply evolution has produced a phyto-plankton community that is remarkably responsive to episodic arrival of iron to patches of ocean water. Iron arrives in these waters by two means one is upwelling of deep ocean waters and the other is airborne dust which originates from dusty regions of land often thousands of miles from where the dust is deposited.

We have been observing very large plankton blooms in the worlds oceans for two centuries. With very rare exceptions such blooms have not been seen to produce terrible effects. We now know that many of these blooms have been produced by the arrival of iron from airborne dust fall. The form of iron arriving in such dust is derived from common "iron ores" which make up 1-3% of dirt and dust around the world. (Where we find this same iron ore in deposits of high concentration we find iron mines.)

This native iron ore form of iron is that which Planktos proposes is the most suitable material for stimulating plankton growth.

Speciation and bio-diversity due to plankton response to iron micro-nutrient additions are most likely similar to those seen in blooms stimulated by iron that arrives by both natural and artificial means. This is however a very important question that needs to be answered by careful applied research. Many ocean iron experiments have already taken place and many more are scheduled by a variety of organizations around the world. Over the course of the next five years we hope to add substantially to the knowledgebase on this topic.

We seek solace when fretting in this manner by reading the poetry of the 13th century Islamic poet Hafiz. 

Have we missed any? Send us your concerns and suggested action! issues@planktos.com

Dec. 2002

Send us a note with your issues and answers!
answers@planktos.com

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