latest news
Marine life faces 'acid threat' - 10 times faster than previously thought
BBC 25 November 08
They sampled coastal waters off the north-west Pacific coast of the US every half-hour for eight years.
The results, published in the journal PNAS, suggest that earlier climate change models may have under estimated the rate of ocean acidification.
Professor Timothy Wootton University of Chicago, says such dramatic results were unexpected as it was thought that the huge ocean systems had the ability to absorb large quantities of CO2. "It's been thought pH in the open oceans is well buffered, so it's surprising to see these fluctuations," he said.
read more ...
Southern Ocean close to acid tipping point in 2030
Nov. 12, 2008 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The results, published in Tuesday's Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, show that these seasonal changes will actually amplify the effects of human carbon dioxide emissions on ocean acidity, speeding up the process of ocean acidification by 30 years.
Ben McNeil, senior research fellow at the UNSW's Climate Change Research Centre, says the ocean is an enormous sink for carbon dioxide, but unfortunately this comes at a cost. "The ocean is a fantastic sponge for CO2, but as it dissolves in the ocean it reduces the pH of the ocean, so the ocean becomes more acidic.."
Once the acidity of the Southern Ocean reaches a certain level, the shells of pteropods and other calcareous marine creatures will start to dissolve.
"That's a really bad point to get to," says McNeil. "After that point, we can't go back unless we suck the CO2 out of the atmosphere."
This so-called 'tipping point' of acidification had been predicted to occur when atmospheric CO2 levels hit 550 parts per million, around the year 2060.
McNeil says ocean acidification could lead to large-scale ecosystem changes, affecting not just plankton but other marine life including fish, whales and dolphins.
"They're at the base of the food chain ... so right now we don't really know the ramifications."
read more ...
Fall in tiny animals, ocean zooplankton,
a biodiversity
disaster of enormous proportions
BBC News 10 July 08
Experts on invertebrates have expressed "profound shock" over a government report showing a decline in zooplankton of 73% since the 1960s. The rate of decline is increasing, with a 50 per cent loss between 1960 and 1990 and then another 50 per cent loss in the next 16 years.
The tiny animals are an important food for fish, mammals and crustaceans.
Figures contained in the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) document, Marine Programme Plan, suggested a fall in abundance.
Charity Buglife, UK organization focusing on invertebrates, said it could be a "biodiversity disaster of enormous proportions".
read more ...
Greenhouse Gases, Meet Your Worst Nightmare: Plankton
Discover June 26, 2008
Call it a happy accident:
Phytoplankton in tropical areas of
the Atlantic Ocean may be helping to break down greenhouse gases.
PICOPLANKTON
After analyzing data gathered by airplane and in a lab at Cape Verde, a chain of Atlantic islands not far from West Africa, a team of British researchers was pleased but puzzled to find that ozone in the atmosphere near the islands had decreased 50 percent more than climate modelers had predicted.
The reason, they think, is that phytoplankton produce chemicals like bromine monoxide and iodine monoxide that get pulled up into the atmosphere. Once aloft, these chemicals can break apart ozone molecules. Not only that, says Alastair Lewis, of the U.K.’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science, but the byproducts of that first chemical reaction then broke down methane, a much worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, into non-harmful components. read more...Dust Storms In Sahara Desert Trigger Huge Plankton Blooms In Eastern Atlantic
ScienceDaily (Feb. 2008) — Scientists on board RRS Discovery are at sea studying the Saharan dust that blows off the coast of Africa - triggering huge plankton blooms in the eastern Atlantic.
Saharan dust is rich in nitrogen, iron and phosphorus and acts as a fertilizer on the production of plankton.
The quantity of dust involved, about 500 million tonnes per year, is sufficient to affect the climate. By partly absorbing and partly reflecting sunlight, the dust particles heat the air but cool the ocean surface. They also encourage cloud formation, which reinforces the reflection of light back into space. read more...
Canary in a tux? Penguin woes signal sea problems
WASHINGTON (AP) 01 July 08 — The dwindling march of the penguins is signaling that the world's oceans are in trouble, scientists now say. Penguins may be the tuxedo-clad version of a canary in the coal mine, with generally ailing populations from a combination of global warming, ocean oil pollution, depleted fisheries, and tourism and development, according to a new scientific review paper.
A University of Washington biologist detailed specific problems around the world with remote penguin populations, linking their decline to the overall health of southern oceans.
"Now we're seeing effects (of human caused warming and pollution) in the most faraway places in the world," said conservation biologist P. Dee Boersma, author of the paper published in the July edition of the journal Bioscience. "Many penguins we thought would be safe because they are not that close to people. And that's not true."
read more ...
Marine life is destroyed by acid environment
London Telegraph 06/2008
Traditional marine communities containing creatures such as sea urchins and snails are being destroyed as CO2 emissions make their environment more acidic
Working in the Mediterranean the team found different gradients of acidity caused by gases emerging from the volcanic vents which allowed them to use it as a 'time tunnel' and to look at the type of conditions expected in our oceans in 2020, 2050, 2100 and beyond.
I must admit I though a lot of the claims being made about species disappearing amounted to scaremongering but now I have seen it with my own eyes. read more...
Scientists paint grim picture of human impact on oceans.
The Age Feb. 08
ALMOST half of the world's oceans have been seriously affected by overfishing, pollution and climate change, according to an international study of humankind's impact on marine life published in the Journal Science.
A team of 19 scientists has published the first comprehensive map showing the combined impact of human activity on seas and oceans. More than 40% of marine regions have been significantly altered, while just 4% remain in a pristine state
read more ...
Sea floor Cores
Show Tight Bond Between Dust And Past Climates
ScienceDaily
(Feb. 29, 2008) — Each year, long-distance winds drop up to 900 million
tons of dust from deserts and other parts of the land into the oceans.
Scientists suspect this phenomenon connects to global climate--but
exactly how, remains a question. Now a big piece of the puzzle has
fallen into place, with a study showing that the amount of dust
entering the equatorial Pacific peaks sharply during repeated ice ages,
then declines when climate warms. The researchers say it cements the
theory that atmospheric moisture, and thus dust, move in close step
with temperature on a global scale; the finding may in turn help inform
current ideas to seed oceans with iron-rich dust in order to mitigate
global warming. read more
Sea life in peril --
plankton vanishing
SF Chronicle
July 2005
Oceanic
plankton have largely disappeared from the waters off Northern
California, Oregon and Washington, mystifying scientists, stressing
fisheries and causing widespread seabird mortality.
The
phenomenon could have long-term implications if it continues: a general
decline in near-shore oceanic life, with far fewer fish, birds and
marine mammals. No one is certain how long the condition will last. But
even a short duration could severely affect seabird populations because
of drastically reduced nesting success, scientists say. read more...
Asian Dust Storm Causes Plankton To Bloom In The North Pacific; Robotic Carbon Explorers Test The "Iron Hypothesis"
In Nature
ScienceDaily
(Oct. 25, 2002) — In the spring of 2001, two robotic Carbon Explorer
floats recorded the rapid growth of phytoplankton in the upper layers
of the North Pacific Ocean after a passing storm had deposited
iron-rich dust from the Gobi Desert. The carbon measurements, reported
in the October 25 issue of Science, are the first direct observation of
wind-blown terrestrial dust fertilizing the growth of aquatic plant
life. read more...
other information
The Most
Important Fish You've Never Heard of
By H. Bruce Franklin, Island Press. February 2008.
Ocean ecosystems are nearing the verge of collapse because of the over fishing of one of the world's most important and little known species.
From The Most Important Fish in the Sea by H. Bruce Franklin. Copyright © 2007
First you see the birds -- gulls and terns wheeling overhead, then swooping down to a wide expanse of water dimpled as though by large raindrops and glittering with silver streaks. The sea erupts with frothy splashes, some from the diving birds, others from foot-long fish with deeply forked tails frantically hurling themselves out of the water, only to fall back into their tightly packed school. More and more birds materialize as if from nowhere, and the air rings with their shrill screams.
Menhaden are the principal fish caught along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, exceeding the tonnage of all other species combined. The menhaden are "reduced" into oil, solids, and meal. The oil from their bodies is pressed out for use in cosmetics, linoleum, health food supplements, lubricants, margarine, soap, insecticide, and paints.
Menhaden are filter feeders. They eat phyto-plankton and in doing so help keep the ocean ecosystem in balance.
Marine biologist Sara Gottlieb, author of a groundbreaking study on menhaden's filtering capability, compares their role with the human liver's: "Just as your body needs its liver to filter out toxins, ecosystems also need those natural filters." Overfishing menhaden, she says, "is just like removing your liver."
But now there are ominous signs that we may have pushed our most important fish to the brink of an ecological catastrophe. read more...
NBC affiliate story
former director
UN Environment Program
introduces Planktos
at National Press Club
BBC 4 Special
Broadcast
June 2008
Russ George.
award wining
premier episode of
podcast
newsroom
PRINTMEDIA LINK TO MULTIMEDIANews Release 24 November 2008
Planktos
Science Calls For Global Ocean Rescue Plan
The picture for the worlds oceans which have been suffering
first and foremost from the deadly effects of CO2 is as follows: the Southern
Ocean has lost 10% of its net primary productivity NPP (read green plants)
since the first ocean observing satellites went up in the early 1980's, the N.
Atlantic has lost 17% NPP in that time frame, the N. Pacific has lost 26% NPP,
and the sub-tropical tropical seas (from Science 2006) have lost 50% NPP. So
while the Southern Ocean has the most recent and authoritative deadline the
rest of our oceans are in equal if not worse condition. To corroborate this in another
report from 2006 the authors reported on finding "The Clearest Water on
Earth" - this find was not in the lakes buried under the miles of
Antarctic ice but rather the waters between Tahiti and Chile where the finding
of such clear water defines a vast part of the sub-tropical Eastern Pacific bereft
of life when it ought to be green and murky with life.
While many
cry out for the ‘cause populaire’, reduction of fossil fuel use, the reality of
the harm and history of CO2 emissions is tied to its long residence time in the
atmosphere before it is mostly absorbed by the oceans. In the oceans CO2 either
becomes living ocean plant biomass, we like to call it the ocean forest, via
photosynthesis or it becomes ocean acid via the first principals chemical
reaction H2O+CO2=H2CO3 (Carbonic acid). As James Hansen and his many
co-authors, published in the past few days, the CO2 levels already in the air
at 389ppm are far to high already and only a significant reduction downward
offers hope. They say the much ballyhooed targets of stopping CO2 at 450ppm or
550ppm represent a death sentence for life as we know it. They reiterate the
fact that CO2 in the air today much of which was part of emissions as long ago
as a 100 years or more is deadly enough even if we were to severely curtail our
current emissions. No one expects our emissions to be curtailed substantially
in the next 21 years which is the time the oceans have left.
Where we can achieve an enormous gain in green
plant life on this planet, in time, and affordably, is in our oceans. Those
losses of ocean NPP mentioned add up to a CO2 conversion from ocean acid to
ocean plant life measured in tonnes of CO2 equivalence of 4-5 billion tonnes
per year. Given that the net problem on this planet of excess CO2 is 8-10
billion tonnes per year, ocean eco-restoration might just buy us the time we
need. This is especially true as this ocean focus will first and foremost
address the CO2 crisis where it is hitting first and hardest as ocean
acidification and loss of ocean plant life.
Some 20
years ago the late Prof. John Martin unraveled the Gordian knot that was the
role of mineral micronutrients in ocean plant ecology. He discovered that the
key mineral micronutrient iron, which arrives in the oceans primarily in the
form of windblown dust, was regulating ocean photosynthesis with enormous
potency. For each tonne of iron from the dust that becomes part of ocean
photosynthesis 367,000 tonnes of CO2 are fixed into ocean phyto-plankton, the
planktos. Now some 20 years later and a quarter of a billion dollars in
international research his remedy has been confirmed. If we replenish the iron
we have denied the oceans we might restore ocean plant productivity and save
life on this blue planet and even the terrestrials that share it.
At Planktos
Science we are undertaking the R&D along with collaborating scientists from
the worlds leading ocean research institutes to work out the details out on how
to restore our oceans, and perhaps just it time, slow the onslaught of ocean
demise for a few extra decades. Provided we are successful we will see a
resurgence of life in the oceans and if life on land can match what life at sea
can deliver and we reduce our carbon footprints maybe, just maybe, we can save
life of earth.
News Release 4 October 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
October 4, 2008
Trillions To Save Financial System
Nary a Pittance
To Save Living Ecosystems
(Ocean Ecorestoration Requires Mere Billions
To Save This Small Blue Planet)
San Francisco: The present global financial crisis is proving that society is willing to take incredible actions for the common good, or at least for the benefit of our banking and credit systems. As we see trillions being allocated to forestall economic upheaval, the sums required to actually save and restore ecosystems on this small blue planet are not even found in the rounding errors.
While our financial world needs saving on one hand, that effort may dangerously distract us from the far more critical and root level planetary demands of the most deadly crisis here on Earth, fossil CO2. Indeed the staggering financial efforts might well be seen in history, if there is anyone left to write that history, as being a major contributor to the destruction of the living ecosystems and ourselves. We cannot afford to fix just one broken part of our world.
The deadly crisis we face is the lethal and short term effect of fossil CO2 but it might not be in the way you think. Sure everyone knows anthropogenic CO2 is causing global warming but that is by definition a glacially slow process. What we ignore as we plod in step with the glaciers is the far more rapid and dangerous chemical role of CO2 in the surface ocean. Living on a small Blue Planet as we do, one might have thought this blue chemistry would be our major focus. Simply put, the CO2 we've fumed into the air over the past century is more than sufficient to change the oceans to acid. H2O + CO2 = H2CO3 (carbonic acid) is the first principals chemistry that is well underway and rapidly progressing. Regardless of whether we emit more CO2, which we are sure to do, the chemical dose already administered will, in a matter of a 3 or 4 decades if we fail to act now, acidify the oceans sufficiently to re-boot the planetary ecosystem and bring back the slimy beginning of life on “earth”, the bacterial sea.
Russ George, president/ceo of Planktos Science says, “There is no penny to spare, there is no political game playing time and attention to waste, and there is no hope for higher life on this small blue planet if we do not begin to substantially reverse the acidification of the oceans through ocean ecorestoration over the course of the next 20 years. We have no more than this century to complete the task.”
The rounding errors from bailing out our financial world would be more than sufficient to restore the ocean world that makes up 70% of this blue planet. As we restore the ocean plants, the planktos, they will compete with simple chemistry and like trees on land use the power of photosynthesis to turn deadly CO2 into ocean life instead of ocean death. Ocean acidification is resolvable through ecorestoration with a few (mere) billions of dollars per year to restore lost plankton blooms that have been destroyed by high and rising CO2.
Let’s save our credit institutions for today but more importantly, and for a tiny fraction of that cost, lets save our planetary ecosystem for tomorrow. If we don’t then surely our intelligent race is destined to be just one of the millions of lines of failed life on this small blue planet.
###
News Release 3 September 2008
British Royal Society and New Ocean Science Papers Call For Ocean Restoration Research Identical To Planktos Science Plans
In July & August two major scientific papers have described the need to study 'iron fertilization', what we more accurately refer to as ocean ecorestoration. What both papers call for is identical to the proposals of Planktos Science.
First the British Royal Society tasked a blue ribbon team to study and report on the topic. Thier initial report titled "Ocean Fertilization: a potential means of geoengineering" states that the potential of this method requires "more extensive targeted fieldwork."
The second paper authored by an international team titled "Designing the next generation of ocean iron fertilization experiments" states that research to date is lacking due to the small scale briefly studied bloom projects and that to answer uncertainties in this field " longer duration (i.e. months) and larger scael observations (100-200 km length scale) are required."
We are delighted to read this coming from the Royal Society and such highly regarded scientists as these recommendations match precisely the work Planktos and Planktos Science have been working to undertake.
This endorsement of identical research to that of Planktos Science is a welcome breath of fresh sea air in a field that has been seriously harmed by 'anti-science' organizations opposing the work of Planktos Science in particular and all research in this field. The orchestrated coordinated efforts of those groups to attack the proposals, scientific credibilty, and people of Planktos is now clearly shown to be the anti-science smear campaign that it was. With such august bodies as The Royal Society now standing in suport of identical efforts as the Planktos Science team we hope the world media and public will now understand the critical importance of this work.
The referenced papers in this release are: Desinging the next Generation of ocean iron fertilization experiments by Watson, Boyd, et al Published in Marine Ecology Progress Series Vol. 364:303-309, 2008 July 29, 2008 and Ocean fertilization: a potential means of geoengineering? by Lampitt, Achterberg, et al Published in Philosophical Transactions of The Royale Society Phil. Trans R. Soc. A doi:10.1098/rsta.2008.0139
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News Release 13 August 2008
North Pacific Puffin Populations Show Dramatic Decline
The Problem For Puffins : San Francisco
Planktos-Science
research vessel Arctic Alpha Wulf, a 40 ft sloop, with Captain Jerry
Borucki is reporting a dramatic decline in sea bird observations on
this 4th year of passages through the North Pacific and into Bering Sea
and Arctic Ocean. While all sea bird numbers appear to be dramatically
declining year to year over most noted is this years dramatic decline
and scarcity of Puffins. Arctic Alpha Wulf is on her way to the North
Pole and if ice conditions, which look good at this point, permit will
become the first sailboat to ever reach the North Pole.
Captain
Jerry Borucki, now in his retirement years and in the grand tradition
of naturalist explorers including Darwin and Audubon, is making use of
careful observation and ordinary scientific instrumentation to
contribute the the understanding of the changing environment of the
oceans. With 40 years of scientific work as a ice physicist for NASA
Ames Research Center, Jerry Borucki is a very capable sailor with over
60,000 ocean miles, passionate naturalist, and wild-life film producer.
Captain
Jerry reports, "Puffins are easy to spot as their wings move much
faster than any other bird and are very black with a dot of orange on
the bow." Being easy to spot and also being a critical marker species
for the health of the ocean ecosystem their stunning population
collapse is most dramatic and alarming. Normally our Puffin
observations number in the hundreds and thousands as one nears Unimac
Pass in the Aleutians but this year only a few dozen birds have been
spotted over a course of hundreds of miles on either side of the pass.
Planktos-Science
believes this reported loss of Puffins in the North Pacific and Bering
Sea correlates closely to the repeated reports of declines of Puffins
in the North Atlantic. This bodes ill for the state of ocean health and
especially the ocean planktos ecology which is now undergoing
catastrophic ecological shifts. Puffins which feed on tiny fish which
in turn feed on the plankton are just one step on the food chain away
from the primary phyto-plankton producers.
The problem for
Puffins is clearly tied to the hundred gigatonne fossil CO2 "carbon
bomb" (that is the fossil CO2 poured into the atmosphere over the past
century) now dissolving into the surface oceans producing dramatic
acidification and ecological change. This acidification is especially
damaging to the smallest of life forms in the oceans which of course
are the microscopic plant plankton, the ocean forest. Compounding the
crisis is the fact that cold oceans, like the ones Arctic Alpha
Wulf is crossing, are capable of absorbing more CO2 than warm oceans
hence the deadly impacts are revealed there first.
While
Arctic Alpha Wulf sails her research course, she is doing her share
sparing the emission of more fossil fuel CO2. Tragically the crisis
observed in the oceans today is derived more from the past century of
fossil fuel emissions which are only now producing these dramatic and
deadly changes. Even though reducing additional CO2 emissions is a good
thing it is our historic CO2 emissions that portend doom for the
Northern Seas and the oceans worldwide. Planktos-Science believes that
the only hope for the ocean ecology and the Puffins is ocean
eco-restoration, the mission of the company is to develop and deliver
this First Aid for Mother Nature. If, through eco-restoration, the
phyto-plankton blooms can be restored to levels of only a few decades
ago billions of tonnes of CO2 now destined to become ocean acid (H2CO3)
will instead become standing biomass, feeding the entire food chain and
Puffins. More information can be found on the work of Planktos-Science
on its web site at www.planktos-science.com
Links to the Puffin Crisis: You can also do a simple Google search on the word Puffin!
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Puffin Numbers
Plummet at the Farne Islands Garden and Green, UK - The Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast has reported a dramatic drop in numbers of Atlantic Puffins on the islands compared to a count five years ago ... |
|
England's
biggest puffin colony shrinking United Press International - BAMBURGH, England, July 26 (UPI) -- The breeding population of Atlantic puffins in England's largest colony has dropped sharply in the past five years, ... |
|
Runnin’
out of puffins ChronicleLive, UK - PUFFIN numbers on the Farne Islands have fallen by a third, bird watchers have found. Nearly 20000 fewer breeding pairs returned to the islands to nest this ... |
 |
National
Trust reports sharp fall in puffin breeding numbers InTheNews.co.uk, UK - The National Trust has reported a sharp fall in the number of puffins breeding in the UK. Results of the trust's quarterly survey show a decrease of about a ... |
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Puffin
numbers in decline after storms Glasgow Daily Record, UK - A HUGE decline in puffin numbers in the North Sea has been revealed by a survey. Breeding pairs have fallen a third in the past five years on the Isle of ... |
|
Numbers
of puffins in decline Mirror.co.uk, UK - A dramatic decline in puffins in the North sea has been confirmed by a new National Trust survey. Breeding pairs have fallen by a third in the past five ... |
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News Release 27 June 2008
Planktos Science Re-Opens For Business — SAN FRANCISCO
The Planktos Science team is back in business following the dissolution of its association with Solar Energy and Planktos Corp.. Following a long and sometimes difficult road of trying to create Planktos Corp. as a public company in association with Vancouver promoters, the founders and people of Planktos formerly dissolved all association with Planktos Corp. and Solar Energy as of February 2008. The decision of SOLAR to not complete the original funding agreement whereby the Planktos team was to the join forces with it to create and operate the public company and other difficulties were cited as the reason for the dissolution.
Formal filings were made with the US Securities and Exchange Commission detailing the legal agreement which specifies the dissolution of the parties relationships. Mr. Russ George, founder of Planktos, was allowed to recover all rights to know how and technology use of the name Planktos, and is guaranteed that no interference with any work he might do in this field would come from SOLAR Energy or parties associated with SOLAR and Planktos Corp. read the SEC filing here...
The new company Planktos Science, based in the San Francisco Bay area with affiliate offices in Canada and the European Union will proceed with it's work on Ecorestoration of damaged ecosystems both at sea and on land. The company expects to be able to swiftly regain its momentum having shed the substantial burdens of being a public company.
Russ George, President/CEO/Chief Scientist says, "The need to engage in ecorestoration to bring our natural ecosystems back to some part of the health they enjoyed as recent as a few decades ago has never been more urgent. The blizzard of reports on the rapidity of the collapse of the ocean ecosystem in particular is terrifying, we can only hope that we might repair some of the harm already done and growing more critical. A timid conservation only ethic will simply serve to render us spectators in the demise of a habitable planet. "
Exactly 20 years
after warning America about global warming, a top NASA scientist said
the situation has gotten so bad that the world's only hope is drastic
action.
James Hansen told Congress on Monday, June 20th., that
the world has long passed the "dangerous level" for greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere. He said Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded
with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes
such as mass extinction, and ecosystem collapse.
"We're toast if
we don't get on a very different path," Hansen, director of the Goddard
Institute of Space Sciences who is sometimes called the godfather of
global warming science, "This is the last chance."
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CONTROVERSY
Tragically some environmental organizations have attacked this field of ecorestoration science in an attempt to prohibit further ocean research. Their reasons for this cynical attack seem complex but in reality boil down to their determination to oppose all ecological and biotechnological solutions to climate change. As these methods act immediately to reduce the crisis, in doing so these effective eoctech solutions undermine the political platform of the green groups who demand a radical reduction of energy use. They have chosen to engage in a classical 'strawman attack' demonizing their opposition through the publication and spreading of 'spin doctored' press releases replete with obvious lies and propaganda suggesting that there is no scientific basis and that there are no laws governing this field. It is all, in their words, like some sort of "wild west" arena. Nothing could be farther from the truth but in this age of instant Internet blogging, gossip mongering, and mudslinging, truth is something that takes a little time and effort to learn. Sadly there is always some media outlet looking for a quick story conforming to media's central editorial premise - "if it bleeds, it leads.' This provides fertile ground for these attacking organizations to harvest funds via their fear mongering "campaigns" but it comes at the expense of our dying oceans. Science, especially complex ecology, doesn't do well in sound bites so please read more...
Here are a few insightful articles in support of 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...
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*************
University of Hawaii at Manoa Researchers Discover New Pathway for Methane Production in the Oceans 7/3/2008 HONOLULU, HAWAIIA new pathway for methane production has been uncovered in the oceans, and this has a significant potential impact for the study of greenhouse gas production on our planet. The article, in the journal Nature Geoscience, reveals that aerobic decomposition of an organic, phosphorus-containing compound, methylphosphonate, may be responsible for the supersaturation of methane in ocean surface waters.
David Karl, an Oceanographer in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and lead author of this paper, was interested in this “methane enigma” and why the surface ocean was loaded with methane. “When people began measuring methane in the ocean, they found that methane concentrations varied with geographical location and with water depth”, says Karl. “If methane was inert in the ocean, its concentration should be constant and nearly equal to the concentration in the atmosphere. What the scientists found was that methane was lower than expected in deep waters, implying net consumption by microbes. However the big surprise was that near surface concentrations are supersaturated, higher than in the overlying atmosphere which indicates a local production of methane in the sea. Because methane is produced only in regions devoid of oxygen and since the surface ocean contains high oxygen levels this was perplexing enigma.”
“This is a newly recognized pathway of methane formation that needs to be incorporated into our thinking of global climate,” says Karl. “Since our oceans cover ¾ of the planet, you just need to stimulate this pathway a little bit and you’re going to create more methane. And one way you can tweak it is to stratify the oceans, which we know will happen. All of the climate models show that the ocean will become more nutrient limited over time.”
Phil Taylor, Acting Head of the Ocean Section, Division of Ocean Sciences at the National Science Foundation (NSF) agrees. “This remarkable discovery about methane production where we thought there would be none is a harbinger of many new insights on the ocean’s changing biogeochemical nature, and the intricate microbiological reasons for those changes.” read more...
A Stern warning on climate change
UK Guardian 27 June
Nicholas
Stern says the cost of climate change is likely to be double his
original estimate. The reality could be even worse.
Stern's
conclusion that it would cost 2% of GDP to tackle climate change,
rather than the 1% of GDP he previously said would be necessary in his
ground breaking 2006 review, is based on a troubling assumption. It
assumes that 2% of GDP will be the cost of stabilizing greenhouse gases
in the atmosphere.
Any more would trigger a sharp increase in the scale of
likely impacts and risk of irreversible catastrophic changes. read more...
No Precedent in
all earth history.
HONOLULU — International Fishers Forum meets in
Honolulu June 18
Charlie Veron, former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, opened the Forum with a presentation on ocean acidification.
He says, "Anthropogenic carbon dioxide is increasing so abruptly that it is now causing fatal mass bleaching of corals worldwide and is set to trigger global mass extinctions through ocean acidification. The rate at which this is happening has no precedent in all Earth history." read more ...
NASA Top Scientist: 'This is the last chance'
WASHINGTON (AP) 23 June 08 — Exactly 20 years after warning America about global warming, a top NASA scientist said the situation has gotten so bad that the world's only hope is drastic action.
James Hansen told Congress on Monday that the world has long passed the "dangerous level" for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. He said Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, and ecosystem collapse.
"We're toast if we don't get on a very different path," Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences who is sometimes called the godfather of global warming science, told The Associated Press. "This is the last chance." read more ...
SEATTLE PI— June 2008
Oceans Turning Acidic
Scientists are still figuring
out what the oceans are going to
look like as they become more acidic due to the absorption of carbon
dioxide.
John Guinotte of Bellevue's
Marine Conservation Biology
Institute was
co-author of a paper in the Annals of
the New York Academy of
Sciences. It's a nice overview of what's known about the
effects of ocean acidification.
It ends with a call to arms to slow the burning of fossil fuels. Said
Guinotte in a statement:
"The risk of irreversible ecosystem
changes due to ocean acidification should enlighten the on-going CO2
emissions debate and make it clear that the human dependence on fossil
fuels must end quickly."
And for some in-the-field research check out this piece in Nature looking at corals growing
near undersea volcanic vents, which simulates the conditions caused by
higher CO2. read
more ...
'Only 50 years
left' for sea fish
By Richard Black Environment
correspondent, BBC News website
There
will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of
the century if current trends continue, according to a major scientific
study.
Stocks have collapsed in nearly one-third of sea fisheries, and the
rate of decline is accelerating.
Writing
in the journal Science, the international team of researchers says
fishery decline is closely tied to a broader loss of marine
biodiversity.
Steve Palumbi, from Stanford University in California, one of the other scientists on the project, added: "Unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the ocean species together, as working ecosystems, then this century is the last century of wild seafood." read more...
Where Have All the Fish Gone?
From the August 2008 Trumpet Print Edition »
The collapse of America’s West Coast salmon fishery has an
eerily familiar ring to it. Are the oceans dying? By Robert Morley
When
explorer John Cabot discovered mainland North America in 1497—touching
down in what is probably Newfoundland or Labrador today—he found the
most fantastic fishing grounds the world has ever seen. The waters
teemed with ocean life.
When Cabot returned with stories of the
Grand Banks, where cod appeared so thick that a person “could walk
across their backs” and they could be caught by just scooping them out
of the water with wicker baskets, the news sparked a mania.
Today,
the Grand Banks are fished out. The cod are gone, and so are the
commercial stocks of flounder, Greenland halibut, and redfish.
On
May 1, U.S. federal authorities declared the West Coast ocean salmon
fishery a failure. The declaration opened the way for Congress to
provide economic aid for California, Oregon and Washington.
The
declaration stemmed from the sudden collapse of the Chinook salmon in
California’s Sacramento River. According to the National Post, the
closure of both the commercial and recreational Chinook salmon fishery
was the first such ban in 160 years (May 3).
Unfortunately, man
always has to learn things the hard way. Overexploitation of resources
and the destruction of the environment is the story of mankind—it is
the story of our cod, our forests and soils, our fresh water. If things
don’t change, it will be the story of the oceans. read more ...
Overfishing of krill threatens ocean ecosystem
Reuters May 25, 2008
SINGAPORE:
In the global rush for resources, a tiny pink crustacean living in the
seas around Antarctica is testing man's ability to manage one of the
last great fisheries in the world without damaging the environment.
Krill,
which grow to about six centimeters, or two inches, occurs in vast
schools and is the major source of food for whales, seals, penguins and
sea birds. Without it, scientists say, the ecosystem in and around
Antarctica could collapse. read more...
Sea's Ebb And Flow Drive
World's Big Extinction Events, Study Suggests
ScienceDaily (June 16, 2008) — If you are curious about
Earth's
periodic mass extinction events such as the sudden demise of the
dinosaurs 65 million years ago, you might consider crashing asteroids
and sky-darkening super volcanoes as culprits.
But a new study,
published on line June 15, 2008 in the journal Nature, suggests that it
is the ocean, and in particular the epic ebbs and flows of sea level
and sediment over the course of geologic time, that is the primary
cause of the world's periodic mass extinctions during the past 500[sc1]
million years. read more...
Ocean Life Under Threat From
Climate Change
ScienceDaily
(June 11, 2008) — “Marine ecosystems are undoubtedly under-resourced,
overlooked and under threat and our collective knowledge of impacts on
marine life is a mere drop in the ocean,” wrote Dr Anthony Richardson,
from The University of Queensland and CSIRO, and his co-author, Dr
Elvira Poloczanska from CSIRO in Hobart.
“There is an
overwhelming bias toward land-surface studies which arise in part
because investigating the ocean realm is generally difficult,
resource-intensive and expensive,” they said.
The disparity in
focus on land-based compared to marine impacts was highlighted in the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Fourth Assessment
Report (2007), which included 28,500 significant biological changes in
terrestrial systems but only 85 in marine systems. read more...
Origin Of 'Breathable' Atmosphere Half A Billion Years Ago Discovered
ScienceDaily
(Oct. 30, 2007) — Ohio State University geologists and their colleagues
have uncovered evidence of when Earth may have first supported an
oxygen-rich atmosphere similar to the one we breathe today.
The
study suggests that upheavals in the earth's crust initiated a kind of
reverse-greenhouse effect 500 million years ago that cooled the world's
oceans, spawned giant plankton blooms, and sent a burst of oxygen into
the atmosphere.
That oxygen may have helped trigger one of the largest growths of
biodiversity in Earth's history. read more...
Climate change is killing the oceans' microscopic 'lungs'
The Independent - Thursday, 7 December 2006
Global warming has begun to change the way microscopic plant life in the oceans absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere - a trend that could lead to a dramatic increase in the heating power of the greenhouse effect. read more...
