Reading a post on Deep-Sea News, and considering some of the recent worries about it I've read and considered on my own it occurs to me that, like flouride in drinking water, ocean fertilization is promising to be a great excuse to dump all kinds of crap in the ocean.
Got some industrial waste? If you can find some dubious mechanism whereby it may cause some plankton blooming, why not get paid to dump it in the ocean instead of paying to properly dispose of it?
Stay tuned for all kinds of abuses and misuses....
More like this
Last week, I heard zoologist Chris Harley speak on how climate change will affect intertidal diversity alo
WHO: Dave Wilmot and Jack Sterne, co-founders of Ocean Champions
A bill in the senate has passed that will focus research on ocean acidification. The Lutenberg Measure, crafted by Senator Frank R.
Tomorrow (Jan 26) will see the public release of Charting the Course for Ocean Science in the United States for the Next Decade: An Ocean Research Priorities Plan and Implementation Strategy which outlines the national ocean research priorities for the United States for the next
Yay! Eutrophication is not only a Good Thing, it's going to be saleable! What a brilliant idea!
Does this mean we'll also be able to claim carbon credits for agricultural run-off?
re: agricultural run-off - exactly what I was thinking, let's watch for the first such claim, it can't be far away!
[Editor's note: sorry this got caught and overlooked in an approval queue I never check for the last 9 months! oops...]
It does seem like there are two different cases:
1) People like Planktos who want to do something different and make money doing it.
2) People who want to get rid of byproducts cheaper.
In either case, the last I heard, good R&D management meant:
1) Do research.
2) Do Development
3) Deploy & scale up
and it's usually considered Good Form to make sure in 1) that you understand whether something works and whether or not it has side-effects.
I attended a conference recently that included a few other wild ideas, and it doesn't seem all bad to be exploring anything remotely reasonable at stage 1), because it will take decades. Of course, leaping to scaled-up deployment with accompanying front-page claims that such geoengineering will fix everything ... don't think so.