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Published online 15 February 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.604
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Planktos dead in the water
Company aiming for ocean fertilization says funds have run dry.
The California-based company Planktos has indefinitely postponed its ocean-fertilization project, which the firm claimed would help counter the rise in greenhouse gases.
The bad news for the company, which was unable to raise required funds, is welcome news for many in the scientific community who had been calling for a halt in such plans for years.
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The politically correct have thwarted an attempt to not only sequester CO2 but also replenish fisheries downstream. Now we will not know the outcome of longterm ocean fertilization.
It is unfortunate that bucket shop offset operators should prey on the presumed outcome of experiments that have scarcely begun - several of the principals in this fiasco have long histories of factoid merchandising,offering one stop shopping for Cold Fusion shares as well as the opportunity to quite literally buy climate indulgences _for_ the Pope- the abortive Planktos/ KlimaFa initiative to 'green' the Vatican by planting trees somewhere in Eastern Europe.: http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/2007/12/walking-the-pla.html
This scheme does nothing to curb emissions from industrial production, it's an excuse for industry not to make hard choices and change, with a trade-off that would not at all be certain. This is not a proven concept, it’s a money-making game. The oceans are a highly complex global ecosystem, not well understood and already stressed by overfishing, pollution and every-country-for-itself mismanagement. What consequence would there be to Planktos for negative effect, even if we could detect it? None, as there is no legal or enforcement impact on this activity. What consequence would there be for no effect? None again, but not OK since the result is belief that we are doing something to solve the problem when we are doing nothing. But what do you know, Planktos and its investors make money whether they deliver real value or not, and industry gets off the hook. Meantime, we delay the inevitable and risk damage to a critical ecosystem. This idea doesn’t meet the test of viability, not from a science or business standpoint, as neither its value nor risk can be measured. This startup deserves not to.
Mr. J. Johnson is encouraged to take a first year course in Oceanography to learn how far off his comment lies. Iron fertilization would sequester little carbon and probably damage the fisheries. There are many other complex interactions taking place that do not enter the political scope.
Increased primary production in the surface waters is followed fairly quickly by microbial re-mineralisation in the water column and deep sea sediments -the sequestered CO2 is not locked away in the seabed when the phytodetritus sinks, the Carbon enters the food chain, fuels respiration of marine organisms, and is eventually returned to the surface as CO2 when deep water currents resurface. The marine carbon cycle is nowhere near fully understood, but a CYCLE is exactly what it is. Planktos and their ilk have not made any credible attempt to determine the medium to long-term impacts of tampering with the biogeochemistry of the Ocean. The research that does exist, particularily with reference to microbial response to carbon input in the deep sea, strongly suggests that the majority of Carbon 'drawn-down' by surface productivity is quickly and efficiently remineralised -what goes down must come back up!