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open letter to the editor of popular science

OK we toned it down but the reality is they did get under our skin as they intended, we are human, and unlike Lincoln we think that it is important that the world see both sides of our story.  The other issue is that when a magazine like Popular Science spends 3000+ words to rag on this topic the idea that a proper response is 200 words seems way out of proportion. Sure we accept many people don't have an attention span of more than 200 words but that is another tragic state of affairs not a reason to limit exchange of facts and ideas to a mere sound bite. 

The Quakers have a grand notion that the way to prevent wrongs from repeating in this world is by "bearing witness" so all can see the wrongs done. Allowing magazines like Popular Science to misrepresent and promote the strawman version of Planktos, history, and this important science would be to turn away and allow them to do it again to someone else.

Regarding the story in Popular Science, Carbon Discredit, July 2008

At first glance at the treatment we received in PopSci we wrote this letter, then we had second thoughts on sending it as friends convinced us you had amply demonstrated it wasn't worth either the effort or aggravation. But now we see you continue with PopSci's banal 'cocktail Internet radio' rehash of your error filled misleading opinion pieces and ad hominem attack so a response seems warranted.

On reading your portrayal of our founder as "bad boy" of the eco-restoration movement 

We were at first upset and angry about this. Now, however, we see the error of that reaction.  We might have enjoyed strutting some "eco-punk" for the crowd, but friends and family immediately reminded us that there are better ways to make passage through middle age, one being to point out that Mick Jaggers experience in the 1960s certainly had a good upshot. And, assuming that your published story eventually brings us to an editor who is interested in what we are really about, "all is well that ends well".

We now have a clue as to why real science is not popular in the world

It is too often written about by people who do not grasp the fundamentals of science, and the process of fact based evidentiary inquiry and rationalism.  This is an angst filled  insight and we thank you for reminding us of it once again.  We will try to stay focused on real science and ignore the pokes and jabs that accompany popular science.

We've come to realize that the problem is that PopSci reacted just as some bureaucracies had to our proposals to bring an eco-business-perspective to a completely new threat to national/global security that exists on a planetary scale. It's not just governments, who we expect to be bureaucratic, but most green organizations as well have long lost their spark and have become dominated by the mediocre bureaucracies of gray men and women who serve political and paycheck rather than heartfelt agendas. The all-to-common bureaucratic response  to an impending crisis is to attempt to solve todays problem by managing with yesterday's tools and from advocacy tainted perspectives that applied 30 years ago. Richard C Clark could provide an example from his new book, also, Al Gore could explain this to you.  And finally, we think there are some x-FEMA employees who you might want to speak with to see how that worked out for New Orleans. 

If you look to the right hand side bar of this page you will find a plethora of reports that support our major premise that the oceans are in need of restoration and not mere conservation. There are countless more examples in the present context of science that show the dire state of the oceans.  

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Specific comments on the Popular Science treatment of our work on replenishing iron micronutrients to the oceans as a means of eco-restoration of the dramatically impacted and diminished ocean ecology. 

We find your presentation(s) are 'alittered' with misleading and erroneous opinion and false statements that we thought we had corrected in our exchanges with you and your reporters. What remains troubling is your clear desire to present the story in the 'if it bleeds, it leads" style of journalism and worse your resorting to the use of 'ad-hominem' attack tactics.  Bill Moyers of television news fame was captured recently in a candid TV moment talking with a similarly attacking FOX TV producer, who claimed to be a reporter trying to obtain his comments on current events, but was displaying many similar characteristics to those revealed in your materials... Moyer's stated to the guy.. "You are a pugilist, not a reporter."  In also choosing this now all too common pugilist format you do a grave disservice to science and even a worse disservice to the ocean environment upon which all life on this blue planet hangs by such a dwindling thread.

OK to start with your editorial, (not published on-line) 

This intro to the major article, that appears in the front of the magazine, is nice to see but misses and misleads on many important points.  Thanks for the few kind words even if your real intent appears to damn us with faint praise or worse.

You note we make a compelling case that ocean acidification is a big problem.

Again thanks, but in the same breath that you toss us this bone of a compliment you criticize us over your flawed mis-interpretation of the details of our work that derive from Straw Man descriptions of it. 

You say our work dared to be too near the hallowed Galapagos Islands.

But you fail to tell your readers that this is where two previously successful multi-national iron addition research projects took place safely, effectively, and with great international acclaim. Nor do you report that the marine oasis effect that enshrouds the Galapagos and makes them so hallowed is a result of the million tonnes of natural iron the islands themselves pour into their surrounding ocean. This is the same sort of iron induced bloom we sought to mimic and study like never before in the history of science.  Further you left out the bit about the state of the ocean near the Galapagos but outside the iron enriched zone which was recently reported in scientific journals as being the most lifeless of anywhere.  So our work sandwiched between the Galapagos oasis and the alarmingly increasing Eastern Pacific dead zone could not possibly be located for better comparative science. But yet you use the fog of distorted and false controversy around the Galapagos to jab at our choices of how and where to do good science and use that to suggest we are lacking in of our diplomacy. 

You taunt our work by pressing the hot button, "Messing with Mother Nature." 

But you fail to put our efforts into a fair and honest context.  Our so called 'messing with Mother Nature' can be explained with the following parable.

We have come across our beautiful Mother Nature lying in the road, a victim of a terrible hit and run accident, she's been run down and critically injured by the fossil fuel age, and we have stopped to render first aid and assistance in hope that we might staunch her wounds and save her. Your response instead panders to those who chase down the road in the same fossil fuel monstrosities as the villain who struck her down, indeed we are all the villains, demanding less fuel be burned and criticizing us for pausing to "mess with and tend to the victim, Mother Nature."

You criticize us for proposing too much too soon.

But you fail to mention the FACT that the projects Planktos was engaged in, and that Planktos-Science now takes on, would see a mere 50-100 tonnes of natural hematite iron dust added to a carefully and well understood small patch of ocean under optimized, controlled, thoroughly monitored, and studied conditions. On board our ship were an international team of scientists representing many institutions. The Weatherbird, a ship with a long scientific history and current US Coast Guard papers certified it as an authentic research ship. The ship represented the first ever dedicated pelagic ocean plankton research vessel operated with the clear intention to to remain with its bloom(s) for the full life cycle, for the first time in ocean science history. 

Nor do you place our work and scale of experiment in context of the local condition in the Eastern the Atlantic downwind of the Sahara, a desert that delivers 500 million tonnes of mineral rich dust into that same ocean every year.  So for the purpose of your readers quick study what, pray tell, is our fraction of Saharan dust. Could it be 50/500,000,000, couldn't you have done this simple math and heaven forbid reported it was to be one ten-millionth the scale of Mother Natures annual work - hardly a large scale and by your suggestions a risky effort.  By the way where is the context that the scale and nature of the project we proposed was directly taken from the international science community consensus on the proper size and character of what should be the next OIF experiment.

In your editorial you define our work almost entirely as carbon marketing, your consistent at least, with use of the Strawman device.

You steadfastly refuse us the dignity to use our own ocean eco-restoration defining character. This following of the 'straw man characterization of Planktos' of course demeans and diminishes the effort to mere commerce, highly suspect amongst the green minded, which of course allows you the luxury of using your nifty "Carbon Discredit" headline for your form of reportage which Bill Moyers has so aptly redefined for the world as pugilism.

Here is the definition of a "Strawman": 

A 'straw man argument' is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw man argument" is to describe a position that superficially resembles an opponent's actual view but is easier to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent (for example, deliberately misrepresenting the opponent's position).

You thankfully describe the galling anti-scientific nature of the green dogmatists who have opposed us.

We'd  thank you for those last words in your editorial, at least you correctly described the galling anti-scientific nature of the green dogmatists.  

And for directly addressing the efforts by Greenpeace and others who are so actively working to block research in this field we agree with you whole heartedly. "This is no time for closed minds."

What you left out: The threats against Planktos people, property, families, the hate mail and hate spam, and the organized conspiracy against this field of science who committed these foul deeds.

Given the hours of time and effort we invested with Popular Science and the depth and breadth of information we provided it is curious that the most galling and revealing facts about those green dogmatists you refer to are found in what you left out of your reports. You failed to report on the threats to life and property that many of those groups engaged in, you failed to report on the threats against the wives and families of Planktos people by those groups, and you failed to report on the misleading and hateful emails replete with lies about our plans, people, and work. All this and more from those same green dogmatist groups sent in vast spam mailings with their ever present pitches for the recipients to donate money to their organizations.  You didn't obtain and critically dissect even one of these green dogmatists hate spam missives as a means to provide some balance to your presentation. Rather you simply parroted their plausibly sounding  critiques revealing a sorry lack of journalistic integrity. And tragically you didn't explore and reveal the behind the scenes orchestration and organization of the conspiracy against this field of critically important science but merely reduced it to the sound bite, "no time for closed minds." 

On to the larger article, Carbon Discredit.

While we thank you for the amount of space you give to this important story we do take exception to many misleading and erroneous elements in the article and the overall drift. The title tells it all about your point of view and intent. 

Strawman Tactics: Why did you choose to refuse us our own clear and defining statement (italics below) and instead make your premise for the story that we are all about the making of money in some sort of Wild West carbon market.

"Help save the world and make a little money on the side ... in that order"  tops our list as the major and outspoken premise for our work that we have consistently made clear in countless interviews and press stories and on the extensive web site of Planktos and now Planktos-Science.com.  This is about eco-restoration of a dying ocean not merely some cynical for profit ...only about the money... enterprise.  This is our defining mantra and whether we make any money or not is clearly secondary to the cause of doing the transparent, quality science, and business practice the highly regulated carbon market requires. You joined with our fiercest critics in your determination to define the Planktos Strawman and then go on to tear down your flawed and false creation.

You have repeatedly put our work inseparably in the context of 'global warming' and not the more critical but lessor known ocean decline.

In spite of our repeated statements that this was about ocean eco-restoration and NOT about slowing "global warming" you have made those words about global warming attributed to us as if we believe them to be at the core of our efforts. We have made it abundantly clear on the record that the major crisis of anthropogenic CO2 is NOT "global warming" but rather ocean acidification and nutrient deprivation.  It is ever so clear and becoming horrifyingly clearer every day that the acidification of the oceans by CO2 is coming upon us all like a rampaging juggernaut and no amount of reducing of our present CO2 emissions will address the fact that there is already 200 years of ocean saturating acidifying CO2 in our atmosphere. Even if we never emit another molecule of CO2, the amount already in the atmosphere and destined to dissolve into the oceans, is more than sufficient to destroy the ocean ecology before our own lifetimes end.

Replenishing the supply of ocean mineral micronutrients we have interfered with holds hope for the oceans 

ONLY by addressing this ocean acidification/denutrification process via the ONLY means possible, that being restoring ocean primary productivity and photosynthesis with replenishment of missing mineral micronutrients, do the oceans have any hope of not "rebooting to the blue screen of death." Actually it might better be called "the blue-green screen of life" which it was in the beginning and will become again, we speak of the cyanobacterial seas that preceded evolution of green plants and production of abundant oxygen. For the billions of years life on this planet was restricted to the ocean slime of the blue-green algae now known as cyanobacteria. Then 600 million years ago the emergence of green plants and animal life began and eventually Popular Science hove into view.

What about the "wild west" of the carbon markets you seem focused on... 

Just what "wild west" are you talking about .. surely not the one that is defined by stringent regulation and laws everywhere with the noted exception of the current US administration.  It is only in the strange and unusual 'Bush Wild West Show' that such carefully regulated markets do not exist. Our countless meetings with government regulators in the Japan, China, the EU,  and elsewhere ... and with UN regulators, with carbon market certifiers, with investment bankers, institutional investors, and all manner of government at levels ranging from local to international is surely not aptly defined as efforts characteristic of a "Wild West Economy of Carbon Markets" as the opponents to this market refer to in their heavily funded media Spin Meister campaigns. 

"Who gets to decide what is right?"  

The answer is simple, and you'd have found it in seconds with an Internet search if you looked, the "who" are the legions of government officials in the Kyoto world who work diligently in this most highly regulated international law arena ever created.  Where the hell does the uninformed misleading statement come from asking "who gets to decide..." it most certainly does not come from anyone who has done even a modicum of research or fact checking in the field of emerging carbon markets, that one is just plain stupid.  Worse it panders to the poisonous ruthless character and tactics of those so called green organizations who have seized climate change and would sacrifice the environment to reach their goals in global green political revolution.

As for the embargo of the Weatherbird off the Canary Islands... 

Where is the fair and balanced reporting that should have said "in spite of documented permits in hand from the Spanish authorities obtained via months of interchange, Spanish authorities reneged on those permissions and permits and refused to allow the Weatherbird to enter Spanish waters after being contacted and lobbied extensively at the last minute by the same environmental conspiracy who had attacked Planktos in Ecuador and the Bahamas and who claimed that natural iron mineral dust not even aboard the ship was a toxic cargo that would endanger the ocean environment."

You cite the iron seminar at Woods Hole and quote experts from there,  seeking but failing to lend balance to your story.

You give Prof. Buesseler of Woods Hole some considerable ink and obviously did little or nothing to fact check once again. In doing this you allow him to make preposterous pontifications on this field of science.  Busseler is one of the most outspoken people who oppose this work and in particular any work that does not ring up funding for his institution or feed his insatiable ego. Why didn't you actually interview one of the many honest principal scientists from the major experiments extant... Oh perhaps that is because it would diminish the fight, heaven forbid the fact that the real story doesn't have actual combatants but rather honest scientific discussion of salient points, how boring. 

A Kangaroo Court Proceeding

You give ink to Busseller's balderdash about offering us the opportunity to talk at his kangaroo court seminar on iron fertilization last fall when it is a matter of record that for months prior to the meeting he steadfastly refused us our many requests for the privilege of delivering our own presentation at said meeting describing our plans. Not only did he he deny us any opportunity to speak he also forbade that more than one from our company attend.  After months of behind the scenes argument he finally offered to allow we could participate in a "panel" at the end of day one of his two day proceeding. He offered we could sit across the table from two of the most disreputable and hostile people in this field who were on record as leading the conspiracy against Planktos and the attacks on our work. His proposition was that after a day of major presentations trashing ours and others work in this field specifically we could prostrate ourself in front of the assembled group to be challenged to answer questions from his chosen inquisitors across his kangaroo court table.  

On the second day when we asked Busseller again if we could speak to tell the truth about our work and plans that had been so blatantly mis-stated the day before he again absolutely refused. His plan was clearly made and executed and that was to present a one sided pseudoscience review of this topic and to treat proponents in this field with a classical straw man attack.

As for using quotes attacking us from our competitor Climos.

Well as one comment on an Internet site referred to that tactic aptly  " that is about as lame a piece of journalism as possible." 

What Popular Science has done and continues to do in this article and its on-line activities is a tawdry job of rehashing media reports with scant reference to, or interest in, the topic or the truth. 

We are appalled that you have such a cavalier attitude to such important matters of both science and the environment. Clearly the tone and content of the story overall give an intentional slur on the character of the people and plans of the Planktos project. One consistent theme is that we as proponents are challenged and critiqued which is as it should be you apparently use much weaker standards from whom you obtain criticisms of our work. 

Simply telling a really important story of planetary survival and necessity likely doesn't thrill your readers like fabricating and fomenting a fight story about good guys and bad guys. Especially when so many have made hay off the same fight story. 

Who gives a damn about life on this planet... there is money to be made in selling magazines fed by advertising. 

But before we take this all too personal we have to remember that your critical condescending mistreatment of our story shares the pages of the magazine with offers to your readers of magical human sex pheromones, radar detectors so they can evade speeding regulations, mysterious oil additives to make their cars burn a fraction of the fuel of normal cars, and of course the piece de resistance, your full color pages hawking of penis enlargement drops. And yet you challenge our sense of science, ethics, and compliance with regulatory processes, and critisize us for being just in it for the money. 

Where is that old Rolling Stones recording, we need a break.

For the reader, if you want to help you might write to: 

Mark Jannot, Editor of Popular Science, at mark.jannot@bonniercorp.com