frequently asked questions
The pioneering of new science and technology always follows a tortuous path involving basic observation, research, creation and testing of ideas / technology, development of measurement and monitoring tools and methods, clearing regulatory hurdles and always being answerable to questions and controversy. Oh yeah, there is that little matter of securing funding and finance to carry on.
NOTE: If your
question is not answered here, please send it to us by email
to: info(at)planktos-science(dot)com
Naturally some concerns are being voiced with regard to the
application
of directed ecorestoration in the oceans. Most of these concerns
seem to focus on the carbon market side of this work which while not
the primary focus of Planktos, is an potentially important facet of the
work. Some of those concerns that have been
made to us include the following:
Ocean science is a mature science with two centuries
of
scientific observation forming our understanding of
the ocean environment. 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 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.
Large
plankton blooms have been commonly observed in the worlds oceans for
two centuries. Blooms on the high seas where iron is limited have never
been reported to produce negative environmental effects.
Plankton blooms near coastlines especially in shallower waters have
frequently shown negative effects though the most noted of these
negative effects "red tide" is not caused by phyto-plankton rather by
microbial life. We now know that many of these high seas blooms follow
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. Iron in natural dust is almost entirely made up of a
red mineral called hematite.
-------------------------
Growing plankton in the ocean won't alone save the world from climate change so why do research on the topic at all?
Ecorestoration and 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 carbon in living trees.
In
addition stable grasslands are also being created for the same purpose
of biomass carbon sequestration. Both of these methods are approved by
international agencies as effect and allowed to participate in carbon
credit trading programs.
Not all of earths land mass
is suitable for growing forests and prairie grasslands and of course no
one
proposes to use the whole of earths land mass for such efforts.
The world is more than 2/3's ocean and those oceans have also
traditionally supported abundant plant life. It is logical to presume
that some regions of the worlds oceans, just
as some regions of the worlds land mass, are suited to encouraging
plant
growth for the benefits derived from ecorestoration and one of these
many benefits is carbon sequestration. Since the
size of the worlds oceans are so great one might imagine that a much
small percentage of the ocean area
might be allocated for this use when compared to human use of planetary
lands.
Large plankton blooms may rot and deplete ocean waters
of oxygen, Eutrophication, resulting in mass die offs of ocean life.
Ocean sciences long history of observation of plankton blooms and the evidence does not support this fear taken in the context of iron additions, especially those on the high seas as opposed to in confined coastal regions. Outside restricted waters claims of possible Eutrophication and suffocation of marine life are not supported by the facts. In what we believe the preferred embodiment of ocean ecorestoration projects, episodic treatment of forest sized patches of ocean would produce the desired effect. By mimicking Mother Nature in both the natural hematite iron to be added and the brief episodic nature of the additions there is no evidence based reason to believe that these ecorestoration blooms would lead to this speculated Eutrophication effect. Given that all anticipated projects would involve intensive scientific study and monitoring program any hint of problems which might arise would be observed and lead to modification of protocols to insure a positive ecorestoration effect.
Most importantly, the only way we might ever have a real answer to this question is to conduct the kind of research program proposed.
Speciation and bio-diversity changes will be inevitable with
iron stimulated blooms thus upsetting the balance of nature.
First off the balance of nature is already severly changed for the worse. Our efforts seek to restore the balance and end some of the harm. Speciation and bio-diversity due to plankton response to iron micro-nutrient additions are are certainly expected to be the same as what is seen in blooms stimulated by iron that arrives by both natural means. The guiding principal of ecorestoration is to achieve recovery of a presently degraded ecosystem returning it a natural state. 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 knowledge base on this topic.
Biomass sequestration by and for industry is a device they use to avoid
doing more important energy conservation and conversion activities.
The presumption that anyone wearing the "black hat" of industry or those who associate with those "black hats" have suspect motives is a common "straw man" argument used by those who would "spin doctor" the public discussion amongst the environmental and scientific community.
People cannot be trusted to do this sort of work without becoming
driven by overwhelming greed, will be outside of regulatory oversight,
and will of course muck up all of the oceans everywhere.
The press releases by many of the organizations who have opposed this topic most vehemently tell a similar story from a different point of view. Campaigns by cynical media focused "deep green" organizations have shown little concern for truth and instead have used their substantial muscle to push easily refuted lies onto the Internet and beyond.
Controversy ?
To anyone reading and becoming informed on the topic of ocean iron fertilization and ocean ecorestoration they will discover a controversy seems to rage on the topic. Indeed a collection of the world's radical environmental organizations have joined forces to oppose ocean iorn fertilization and ecorestoration and have done so in a cynical and media manipulative fashion. Sadly many in the media seem incapable of understanding scientific topics especially when well known environmental organizations choose misinform, disinform, and to pour blood in the water to stir a feeding frenzy on thier fund raising motivated disinformation campaign. This technique of fomenting controversy feeds into the mass media's most central guiding principal "If it bleeds it leads." Just because the media seem to be reporting on a fight, a more apt description is that there is an mugging taking place.
Here are a few insightful articles on our work
The Iron Shore of Science Journalism,
Nature News downplays a message found in a bottle.
from ADAMANT - What's the matter with Science & the Media
The
gap between environmental science and its representation to the public
continues to widen. The prospective use of iron to reduce CO2 by
enhancing plankton blooms at sea has created one of the warmer
fronts in the Climate Wars. read more...
Has
Personal Bias Been Allowed to Derail the Normal Progression of Ocean
Fertilization Science? An Open Letter to the Marine Science
Community "Ed - quite brilliantly dissects hidden politics in play, from Iron Fertilization News Blog by Steve Kerry"
Given
the extreme hazard of global warming, the recent revelations of ocean
acidity, and reports of bio-system collapse of various sorts, one would
think that the concept of Ocean Iron Fertilization would get be treated
most seriously. Although controversial and not yet completely proven,
this technology still might be very important to the world. As Ken
Johnson of Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute said: “We’re headed
towards climate conditions that Earth hasn’t experienced in millions of
years…We can’t afford to ditch any potential solutions just now.”
read more...
The vicious lie behind the global warming scare
From Truth, Justice, and the America Way.
The environmentalist movement believes that unless immediate and drastic measures are taken to combat global warming, “disease, desolation and famine” are “inevitable” on a scale that might spell the end of life on earth, making earth “as hot as Venus.“ Surely, such an apocalyptic threat demands immediate action. Given the resistance to curtailing industrial production (not to mention the economic destruction and mass death that such a curtailment would entail), environmentalists should eagerly supports experiments that attempt to compensate rather than eliminate the impact of industry on the environment.
In fact, a number of relatively simple, low-cost
measures have been proposed by scientists and entrepreneurs, one of
which is documented in the June 2008 issue of Popular Science (PDF). As
early as 1988, oceanographers proposed seeding the oceans with iron,
which would cause an algae bloom that could rapidly compensate for the
entire effect of industrial civilization for far less money that it
would cost to eliminate CO2 emissions. Seeding experiments by the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have demonstrated that the
technique works, although further experimentation is required. A number
of entrepreneurs, such as Russ George of Planktos Corp (TED video)
stepped forward to carry out the required work.
How would you expect environmental groups to react to such an opportunity? If you guessed outright or even cautious optimism, you would be dead wrong. read more...
If you've still got some reading left in you here are some salient thoughts on the fabric of science.
An idea is something you have; an ideology is something that has you."
Morris Berman
"I
know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the
greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most
obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity
of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues,
which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven,
thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."
Tolstoy
"A
new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and
making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually
die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
M. Planck
"Science
is not formal logic–it needs the free play of the mind in as great a
degree as any other creative art. It is true that this is a gift which
can hardly be taught, but its growth can be encouraged in those who
already posses it."
Max Born (1882-1970) German Physicist. Nobel Prize, 1954.
"There ain't no rules around here! We're trying to accomplish something!"
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
"The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events..."
John Kenneth Galbraith
"One
could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast
to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of
scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded
and dull, but also just stupid."
J. D. Watson _The Double Helix
"Round
about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever
floats a sort of dust-cloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences
minute and irregular and seldom met with, which it always proves more
easy to ignore than to attend to... Anyone will renovate his science
who will steadily look after the irregular phenomena, and when science
is renewed, its new formulas often have more of the voice of the
exceptions in them than of what were supposed to be the rules."
William James
"It's like religion. Heresy in science is thought of as a bad thing, whereas it should be
just the opposite."
T. Gold
"There
is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns
of conjecture out of such trifling investment of fact."
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
"Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever."
Thomas Edison, 1889
"It
is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly
one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit
facts."
Sherlock Holmes
"There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea."
Percy Williams Bridgman (1882-1961) U. S. physicist, Nobel Prize, 1946
"I
believe there is no philosophical high-road in science, with
epistemological signposts. No, we are in a jungle and find our way by
trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed."
Max Born (1882-1970) German Physicist. Nobel Prize, 1954.
"It
is not as uncommon for engineers to accept the reality of phenomena
that are not yet understood, as it is very common for physicists to
disbelieve the reality of phenomena that seem to contradict
contemporary beliefs of physics "
-H. Bauer
"If a man is in too big a hurry to give up an error he is liable to give up some truth with it."
Wilbur Wright, 1902
"The
more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all
been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the
possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new
discoveries is remote.... Our future discoveries must be looked for in
the sixth place of decimals."
Albert. A. Michelson, U. of Chicago, 1894
"There
is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be
obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be
shattered at will."
Albert Einstein, 1932
"Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature."
Michael Faraday
"...man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up,
walk over or around it, and carry on."
Winston S. Churchill
"I
am tired of all this sort of thing called science here ... We have
spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and
it is time it should be stopped."
U.S. Senator Simon Cameron, on the Smithsonian Institute (1901)
"In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of
a single individual."
Galileo Galilei
"Don't
worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are that good,
you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
- Howard Aiken
"He who never walks save where he sees men's tracks makes no discoveries."
J.G. Holland
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."
Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
"Atomic
energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is
unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous."
Winston Churchill (1939)
"That is the biggest fool thing we have ever done ... The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives." -
U.S. Admiral William D. Leahy to President Truman, on atomic weaponry (1945)
"I
am tired of all this sort of thing called science here ... We have
spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and
it is time it should be stopped."
U.S. Senator Simon Cameron, on the Smithsonian Institute (1901)
"I watched his countenance closely, to see if he was not deranged ... and I was assured
by other senators after he left the room that they had no confidence in it."
U.S. Senator Smith of Indiana, after witnessing a demonstration of Samuel Morses's telegraph (1842)
"X-rays are a hoax."
Lord Kelvin, engineer and physicist (c. 1900)
"... too far-fetched to be considered." -
The
editor of Scientific American, in a letter to Robert Goddard
about Goddard's idea of a rocket-accelerated airplane bomb (1940)
"They never will try to steal the phonograph. It is not of any commercial value."
Thomas Edison (c. 1915)
"Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure."
Henry Morton, on Edison's incandescent lamp (c.1880)
"I
must confess that my imagination, in spite even of spurring, refuses to
see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and
floundering at sea."
H.G. Wells, Anticipations (1901)
"People
give ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the
earth revolves, not the heavens of the firmament, the sun and the moon
... This fool wishes to reverse the entire scheme of astronomy; but
sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded
the sun to stand still, not the earth."
Martin Luther, about 1540, in Table Talk.
"The
view that the sun stands motionless at the center of the universe is
foolish, philosophically false, utterly heretical, because contrary to
Holy Scripture. The view that the earth is not the center of the
universe and even has a daily rotation is philosophically false, and at
least an erroneous belief."
Holy Office, Roman Catholic Church,
edict of March 5, 1616.
"The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing;
every
one must be an author; some out of vanity, to acquire celebrity and
raise up a name, others for the sake of mere gain."
Martin Luther (1483-1546), Table Talk.
"It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow."
-Robert Goddard
"The
man who cannot occasionally imagine events and conditions of existence
that are contrary to the causal principle as he knows it will never
enrich his science by the addition of a new idea."
Max Planck
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
Phillip K. Dick
"There
are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top
problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that
I lost long ago."
Robert Oppenheimer
"The discovery
of truth is prevented more effectively not by the false appearance of
things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness
of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice."
Schopenhauer
"Who never walks save where he sees men's tracks makes no discoveries."
J.G. Holland
"When
I examined myself and my methods of thought, I came to the conclusion
that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for
absorbing positive knowledge."
Albert Einstein
"The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best -- and therefore never
scrutinize or question."
Stephen Jay Gould
There is no better soporific and sedative than skepticism."
Nietzche
"The
soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status
quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest
pain is the pain of a new idea."
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality,
is primitive and childlike and yet it is the most precious thing we have."
Einstein
"I love fools' experiments, I am always making them."
Darwin
"The whole of science consists of data that, at one time or another, were inexplicable."
B. O'Regan
"A
new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be
stabbed to death by a joke, or worried to death by a frown on the right
person's brow."
Charles Brower
"The only solid piece of
scientific truth about which I feel totally confident is that we are
profoundly ignorant about nature... It is this sudden confrontation
with the depth and scope of ignorance that represents the most
significant contribution of twentieth-century science to the human
intellect."
- Lewis Thomas
"Let the mind be enlarged... to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not the mysteries contracted to the narrowness of the mind"
Francis Bacon
"Science
for me is very close to art. Scientific discovery is an irrational act.
It's an intuition which turns out to be reality at the end of it - and
I see no difference between a scientist developing a marvelous
discovery and an artist making a painting."
C. Rubbia, Nobelist and director of CERN
"You can recognize a pioneer by the arrows in his back."
Beverly Rubik
"The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think."
Aristotle
"The
test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed
ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to
function."
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Unnamed Law:
If it happens, it must be possible.
"When
a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is
possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something
is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
Arthur C. Clarke's First Law
"It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover."
H. Poincare
"Thus,
the task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to
think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees."
Erwin Schrödinger 1887-1961
"Of
course, if one ignores contradictory observations, one can claim to
have an 'elegant' or 'robust' theory. But it isn't science."
Halton Arp
Science advances funeral by funeral.
"A man with a new idea is a crank until he succeeds."
M. Twain
Never attribute to conspiracy that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
"I never make predictions, especially about the future."
Casey Stengle
"Man won't fly for a thousand years."
Wilbur Wright, (1901)
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895
"What, sir? You would make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire
under her decks? I pray you excuse me. I have no time to listen to such nonsense."
Napoleon Bonaparte to Robert Fulton, upon hearing of the latter's plans for
a steam-powered engine.
"I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning."
Lord Kelvin, engineer and physicist (c. 1890)
"In
all fairness to those who by training are not prepared to evaluate the
fundamental difficulties of going from one planet to another, or even
from the earth to the moon, it must be stated that there is not the
slightest possibility of such journeys."
F.R. Moulton, American astronomer (1935)
"The
Panama Canal is actually a thing of the past, and Nature in her works
will soon obliterate all traces of French energy and money expended on
the Isthmus."
Scientific American (1981)
A
committee, organized to study Columbus' plan to sail west to discover a
shorter route to the Indies, reporting to King Ferdinand and Queen
Isabella of Spain in 1486 that the trip was impossible because
1. A voyage to Asia would require three years
2. The Western Ocean is infinite and perhaps unnavigable.
3. If he reached the Antipodes [the land on the other side of the globe from Europe] he could not get back.
4. There are no Antipodes because the greater part of the globe is covered with water,
and because Saint Augustine says so ...
5. Of five zones, only three are habitable.
6. So many centuries after the Creation it was unlikely that anyone could find hitherto unknown lands of any value.
"Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which man will never be able to cope."
Simon Newcomb, American astronomer (1903)
"If God had intended that man should fly, he would have given him wings."
George W. Melville, chief engineer of the U.S. Navy (c. 1900)
"A
web of naked fancies." - A critic's reaction to the publication of
physicist George Simon Ohm's theory of electricity (Ohm's law) in 1827
"Science, it would seem, is not sexless; she is a man, a father, and infected too."
Virginia Woolf, 'Three Guineas', 1938
"Lee
DeForest has said in many newspapers and over his signature that it
would be possible to transmit the human voice across the Atlantic
before many years. Based on
these absurd and deliberately
misleading statements, the misguided public ... has been persuaded to
purchase stock in his company ..."
U.S. District Attorney,
prosecuting American inventor Lee DeForest for selling stock
fraudulently for his Radio Telephone Company (1913)
Physicists Bill of Rights - (Author Unknown)
We
hold these postulates to be intuitively obvious, that all physicists
are born equal, to a first approximation, and are endowed by their
creator with certain discrete privileges, among them a mean rest life,
n degrees of freedom, and the following rights which are invariant
under all linear transformations:
1. To approximate all problems to ideal cases.
2. To use order of magnitude calculations whenever deemed necessary (i.e. whenever one can get away with it).
3. To use the rigorous method of "squinting" for solving problems more complex than the addition of positive real integers.
4. To dismiss all functions which diverge as "nasty" and "unphysical."
5.
To invoke the uncertainty principle when confronted by confused
mathematicians, chemists, engineers, psychologists, dramatists, and
other lower scientists.
6. When pressed by non-physicists for an
explanation of (4) to mumble in a sneering tone of voice something
about physically naive mathematicians.
7. To equate two sides of
an equation which are dimensionally inconsistent, with a suitable
comment to the effect of, "Well, we are interested in the order of
magnitude anyway."
8. To the extensive use of "bastard notations" where conventional mathematics will not work.
9. To invent fictitious forces to delude the general public.
10. To justify shaky reasoning on the basis that it gives the right answer.
11. To cleverly choose convenient initial conditions, using the principle of general triviality.
12. To use plausible arguments in place of proofs, and thenceforth refer to these arguments as proofs.
13. To take on faith any principle which seems right but cannot be proved.
"New
and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled,
the humiliating question arises, 'Why then are you not taking part in
them?' "
H. G. Wells
"I believe there is no source
of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a
fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are IMPOSSIBLE."
William James
"There is nothing particularly scientific about excessive caution. Science thrives on daring generalizations."
L. Hogben
"Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul."
Mark Twain
"A danger sign of the lapse from true skepticism into dogmatism is an inability to respect those who disagree"
Dr. Leonard George
"Now,
my suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose,
but queerer than we can suppose... I suspect that there are more things
in heaven and earth
than are dreamed of, in any philosophy"
J.B.S. Haldane
"The farther the experiment is from theory, the closer it is to the Nobel Prize."
Joliet-Curie
"Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be defeated, but they start a winning game."
Goethe
"As long as we do science, some things will always remain unexplained."
Fritjof Capra
"If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar."
Richard Feynman
"The
philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and
the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow."
Sir William Osler
"Perhaps
the only thing that saves science from invalid conventional wisdom
thatbecomes effectively permanent is the presence of mavericks in every
generation -
people who keep challenging convention and thinking up new ideas for the sheer hell of it or from an innate contrariness."
Dr. D. M. Raup, Paleontologist, U. Chicago.
"Never attribute to conspiracy that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Heinlien