Fertilizing the Ocean with Iron (2007)

Fertilizing the Ocean with Iron (2007)(whoi.edu)

38 points by astrobase_go 5 years ago | 50 comments

GOONIMMUNE 5 years ago |

It seems more and more likely to me that the general approach to climate change is going to simply be adaptation. We'll have to figure out ways to live and grow food in a hotter world that has more dramatic weather events. I think this will be expensive and could tragically lead to the deaths of many people who cannot afford to live in this new world.

If a large country with many poor people are faced with this situation, maybe it's likely that they might try one of these geoengineering efforts as a last resort? The environmental effects are unpredictable, but if it could save a lot of lives...

Ma8ee 5 years ago | |

Yes, we will have to adapt. That doesn’t change the fact we also must try to slow and minimise it as much as is possible. Adapting to two degrees is probably an order of magnitude easier than adapting to four or five degrees.

We rich westerners will most likely only be inconvenienced. We have our AC and we can afford more expensive food. If you live close to the coast or a river you might need to move.

The greatest problem we will have to face is probably the huge waves of refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Not only from starvation, but from conflicts about e.g., water.

ncmncm 5 years ago | | |

The problem we face is the rise of Fascism in response to those waves, and the bad government and, most likely, war, always instigated by Fascists.

It is already starting.

nix23 5 years ago | | |

>We rich westerners will most likely only be inconvenienced.

For how many generation will that be?

X6S1x6Okd1st 5 years ago | |

If you're interested in adaptation in food systems I really enjoyed The Fate of Food: What We'll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World.

I'm currently working through Whole Earth Discipline which calls for work on three different fronts: Reduction (of emission), Adaptation (to unavoidable change) and Geoengineering (to prevent the worst of it).

Without significant government ran/funded geoengineering projects we'll be living with at least ~1.5 C above pre-industrial levels. We'll need to do some adaptation as is.

wahern 5 years ago | | |

> The Fate of Food: What We'll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World.

One of my favorite quotes in this vein is "We are eating bait and moving on to jellyfish and plankton", referring to overfishing and climate change changing Americans' seafood diet. From http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/30/local/la-me-ocean30j....

Of course, many cultures have always eaten and enjoyed jellyfish, but that's beside the point. The ethnocentrism is what sells it to the conservative American audience.[1] ;)

[1] Well, older conservative audience. Many younger conservatives grew up only eating trash fish, at best.

JanSolo 5 years ago | |

Adaptation will happen for sure. Here are some examples of things that we should expect to see in the coming years:

* No more building in flood-plains or low-lying coastal regions.

* Flood insurance in those areas will lose their subsidies and will become expensive.

* Areas in Florida, Louisiana, etc will become poorer as those who can afford to relocate do so.

* Farming will slowly move north; southern areas that are currently farms will dry out and become non-viable.

* Alternative energy might take the place of farming in the south. Solar farms? Wind Turbines?

* Inland cities will become more popular because of their reduced risk of climate-related events. Denver, Phoenix, Dallas, Washington, will likely all get net-positive migration.

* Conversely, the big coastal cities will become more expensive and cause people to start leaving. NY, LA, San Francisco, Boston, etc.

aaron695 5 years ago | |

> and could tragically lead to the deaths of many people who cannot afford to live in this new world.

We don't care about the billions who can't afford to live in the current world.

But we do care about the ones who can't afford to live in the new one!

Why is this? It took a rich silicon valley dude to care about polio. But every layperson wants to destroy the current economy for future people.

Being from the future they are super rich compared to us, like every new generation now, so perhaps they just are better at writing Twitter hash tags?

greenonions 5 years ago |

There are so many lower hanging fruit for reducing emissions of and sequestering existing carbon.

If you simply restored the majority of the US great plains back to a bison centered ecosystem instead of cattle, you'd produce a similar resource (bison meat) in large quantity while reducing emissions, and the tall grass would sequester an enormous amount of carbon.

24gttghh 5 years ago | |

I was about to say most of the plains are used for growing corn and not grazing land but I was wrong, partly. Its mostly cropland in the Northern/Central plains, but mostly grazing/pasture land otherwise.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses/maps-...

mdorazio 5 years ago | | |

Worth noting also is that major crops grown there, like corn and soybeans, are primarily used as animal feed [1][2]. A decent chunk of corn is also used for ethanol additives to gasoline. The best thing we can do for the environment by far is reduce consumption of beef and dairy products.

[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn-and-other-feedgra...

[2] https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/coexisten...

boxed 5 years ago | |

Would it though? I don't see how because if it did sequester a lot of carbon (not just a one time chunk but over time) then the world would have way less carbon in the atmosphere than it did before industrialization.

wongarsu 5 years ago | | |

Most of the effect is just that plants are mostly made out of carbon, so having more plant mass means more carbon in plants and less in the atmosphere. It's the same for trees.

It's a sink of fixed size, not a bottomless barrel we can dump infinite amounts of CO2 into. That doesn't make it useless though.

baggy_trough 5 years ago | |

"simply"

aaron695 5 years ago |

This has been done, I think most people know this.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-...

You can track down the 8 years of followup articles and research papers.

There is no evidence it didn't work. There's evidence it did.

The trick is, tie it to fishing and it might make a difference. Or it might just take pressure off fisheries.

You have billions yet to eat more meat, so hurry up with your lab grown meat or start doing things like this, that also should get the same subsidies as things like solar power.

omginternets 5 years ago |

Every time I read something like this, my hubris alarm goes off. We couldn't even get trans-fats right, so I don't see how we're going to cover all the contingencies for something like this.

frazbin 5 years ago | |

'Terraforming' earth has never been easy but it has long been necessary to feed humans. Bulk addition of soluble/leachable nutrients (naturally depleted by rainfall, fractionation by gravity, and chemical transformation) is the primary novel intervention in modern agriculture. We've learned that biological systems can be made to cycle much faster by turning the crank in this way. The rewards are great-- used in land, 7 billion fed. Use of similar intervention in the ocean suggests proportionally larger rewards.

Further, we've already destabilized the global system by injecting carbon. It is now our responsibility to find a way to stabilize it again.

omginternets 5 years ago | | |

Yes, this is all true, and yet it’s the unknowns that will get us. There was a time where burning coal seemed like a good idea.

SubiculumCode 5 years ago | |

The original hubris was thinking we could put all these greenhouse gasses in the air and do climate change and fk the consequences.

omginternets 5 years ago | | |

False dichotomy, my friend.

I agree with your statement, too.

LatteLazy 5 years ago |

Our species has repeatedly been really clear: we're not going to do anything about climate change. Stop pretending lack of interest is lack of options.

X6S1x6Okd1st 5 years ago | |

Eurpoe + common wealth + USA + Canada has seen declining CO2 per capita since ~2002, many of them earlier than that.

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?tab=chart&xScale=li...

Just because it's not enough and it's been slow doesn't mean it's nothing.

api 5 years ago | | |

That has been achieved largely by outsourcing heavy manufacturing that requires a lot of cheap energy to China.

China one of the highest carbon emission rates per GDP of any large developed nation, but China can't exclusively be blamed for that. China is the "workshop of the world." It's where other countries send their polluting industries to get that pollution out of sight and out of mind, as well as to exploit cheaper labor and a high concentration of manufacturing expertise. China is blasting out CO2 to manufacture products that are exported back to the US, Canada, Europe, and so on, making the latter's carbon emissions look better than they actually are.

I'm not saying China couldn't be cleaner, just that the economy is global and so is this problem. If China switched to cleaner but more expensive energy and took other steps to reduce CO2 emissions, their costs would go up. This would just push manufacturing to whatever countries are willing to ignore climate change.

LatteLazy 5 years ago | | |

A few counter points:

* rate of World co2 emissions continue to rise.

* we don't just need rate to stop rising, we need rate to fall to pretty much zero.

* and if we could magically get rates to stop rising, and fall to zero, tomorrow, we'd still have about 2 degrees of warming from all the emissions already up there.

People have completely missed the point: the rate of growth of rate of emissions might have improved in some places. But the problem is total amount emitted.

Oh, and you don't avert climate change with per capita cuts if population keeps growing. Which it will, till about 2100.

dr_dshiv 5 years ago |

Seems to me that an all of the above strategy would let us learn the most. We are part of nature, so it wouldn't surprise me if we need to get good at cultivating these feedback loops...