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Ocean seeding plans to capture carbon in oceans draws fire

  2. JanforGore
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In some of the most ambitious efforts by green tech start-ups, a handful of businesses have emerged with plans to capture large amounts of carbon dioxide by stimulating the growth of ocean plankton.

On Monday, a group of watchdog environmental bodies, including Greenpeace and the ETC Group voiced their opposition to a project proposal from Australia-based Ocean Nourishment.

The company is said to be planning on "seeding" the Sulu Sea between the Philippines and Borneo with a nitrogen nutrient called urea, which would be pumped into the ocean from a special plant.


A plankton bloom. Good to capture carbon dioxide?

(Credit: Planktos)The idea behind these geo-engineering projects is to drop large amounts of food into the ocean, which acts as a fertilizer to grow plankton. During metabolism, the plankton should be able to consume large amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas linked to global warming.

Other clean tech companies pursuing similar approaches include Planktos which is using iron as a fertilizer. It intends to fund the business by selling carbon credits, represented by the carbon dioxide sequestered by plankton growth.

Another company, called Climos, last month issued a call to create a code of ethics for ocean carbon experiments, which includes a permitting process and oversight over the environmental impact of these practices.

"Clearly, a market has emerged that can fund carbon mitigation activity. However, important questions of effectiveness, environmental impact and corporate conduct in all ocean fertilization projects need to be addressed as these projects move forward," Margaret Leinen, Climos' chief science officer, said in a statement.
JanforGore

23 responses // Ocean seeding plans to capture carbon in oceans draws fire

  • http://www.cdnn.info/news/eco/e070619.html
    I think this is a scam as well and can harm the ocean ecosystems.Talk about taking advantage of a crisis. We should be thinking of ways to stop the Co2 from entering the oceans, but it seems there will be those who will only try to make money off of these cocamamie schemes that will actually wind up hurting the environment more.
    JanforGore
  • http://envirowonk.com/content/view/235/1/
    UN Nixes Ocean Seeding... For Now
    JanforGore
  • Jan: what are these people smokin??
    spunkycarol
  • is there any scientific evidence (reliable) that can back this up. Call me an optimist but what if it could work?
    BruceBruce
  • Not only have we destroyed the Earth, but our "efforts" to restore nature are also this side of dangerous.
    First, we "Play Devil" and do damage to Mother Earth, then we "Play God" and try to make things better. I don't know what the world needs, but I know it doesn't need us.

    END TRANSMISSION
    PajamaDan
  • I don't think we should be messing around with this.
    jefftego
  • Sounds pretty crazy to me - the determination by the human race to mess with nature in bizarre and new ways continues.
    p.s. - does any one know - when we post articles or comments - does html work - or any other type coding.
    I ask because i notice the photos in above comments.
    Yoopernewsman
  • what if the 'engineered' plankton starts a whole new mutant marine species?...just leave it alone.
    jaxgrfx
  • Don't just do something. Stand There!
    jahbini
  • Bruce Bruce: humans messing around with natural processes is in my opinion not wise. However, it seems we humans only know about bandaid solutions. Desalination, carbon capture sequestration, ocean seeding... Gm Foods... and all of them have adverse effects on the very environment we claim we want to save. It seems simple enough to me: If you want to mitigate Co2 and its absorption by oceans you stop spewing it into the atmosphere by finding alternate energy sources and capping your emissions.

    Algae blooms can be deadly.This could adversely alter the chemical composition of the oceans more than we already have done and open other species up to death. We don't know all of the ramifications of this. Our constant poking and prodding Mother Nature is not serving us well now. I say these companies should be using their dollars to push for more sustainable energy sources and carbon caps.

    This will also not work if people continue to spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at the pace it is now being done, and companies invested in these types of schemes will never really push for caps then because it will take profits from them. How much seeding could you possibly then do without truly doing irrevocable damage to those ecosystems? That is why I hope in our zeal to find solutions that we don't just wind up getting ourselves deeper into catastrophe.
    JanforGore
  • Yeah, this only keeps the dirty practices going longer, weather it works or not.

    The idea should be, STOP THE FUCKING DIRTY PRACTICE!

    It's not rocket science.

    ps. Excuse my French... I'm just a little worked up over these bullshit (more French!) "plans" lately.
    onechance
  • onechance : more people should be so worked up.
    JanforGore
  • Thanks Jan-

    You're so right. "The man never worried, until the well went dry."

    As long as people have their American Idol and their Starbucks, they don't give a shit.

    Sorry to stereotype, but I see a whole lot of complacency, a whole lot of pollution, consumption, new mouths to feed, and a whole lot of plastic bags floating around.

    The American dream: FUCK EVERYONE ELSE, I GOT MY JETSKI. (On credit).

    I'm fed up.

    I'm 2 steps from running around with a big sign in a chicken suit (you know, to get the mesage out).

    WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!

    ps. I'm probably preaching to the choir here as most ppl on this site have THEIR shit together... You rock.
    onechance
  • Hey, if you've got two chicken suits I'll join you.
    JanforGore
  • Fuck it, I'll rent em!
    onechance
  • That has to be the dumbest idea I have ever seen.
    BretByron
  • http://www.whoi.edu/redtide/
    More on toxic algae blooms (red tide.)
    JanforGore
  • That is SO interesting. Our world is so incredible and we are the cancer of it, lately...

    We have potential to coexist, but instead we breed like flys and consume like locusts.

    Sucks.

    Let's change it.

    Check out something awesome I found.
    I bought them and they work so well Super sturdy.

    http://olivesmart.com/
    onechance
  • I wouldn't use urea in my garden and "seeding" the ocean with it sounds like a terrible idea. Since tons of urea probably run into our rivers from agriculture, couldn't we see the results by testing downstream from farms and at the mouths of rivers? According to the movie "The 11th Hour" all our run off and effluence is creating dead zones. Wouldn't we be risking too much experimenting with "seeding" oceans with urea? The oceans are already in really bad shape, and this could compound the problem. It would be better to stop treating the ocean as one big dump.

    When will we realize that we're all down stream?
    covelogibbs
  • i have to agree with the nay sayers on this one for sure. where i live in northern california there is high synthetic nitrogen run off from outdoor agriculture. the rivers (some of them) in the summer get algae blooms in them that kill dogs who swim through them. you dont swim in certain rivers during certain warm sunny months. this is the price of irresponsible agriculture. and to intentionally cause these types of conditions seems short sighted. i think introducing or seeding species or sciences that used existing conditions to achieve affect may offer hope but artificially changing conditions to change conditions sure will do just that but prob. not in any way that would be beneficial in the end. in my humble opinion.
    somefamilylove
  • Snow blizzards, droughts, mudslides, landslides, tornadoes, errosion, hurricanes, typhoons, floods, melting glaciers, extinction....is our planet not speaking "loud" enough for us to hear?

    We have damaged things enough already.
    julesrs007
  • Any scheme like this needs to be tested on a small scale first to find out what the dangers might be. Every solution creates a new problem. One of the reasons the 'horseless carriage' was invented was a hay shortage to feed all the horses being used for transportation. Look where that solution has brought us. The 'horseless carriage' could well be the death of us all. I agree fully that we need to limit carbon emissions and the fastest way to do that is with a carbon tax.
    philbangs
  • I hope this doesn't backfire the way too many of those cloud-seeding ruses did in the 70s. Some of that ill conceived foolishness is still crapping up the air we can barely breathe today.

    Our potable water supplies are much too precious and few to risk further contamination by idiots out to afix a monetary tax on our use or consumptions of every drop of water in the world.

    At some point, this carbon tax idiocy becomes pretty ludicrous.
    96thdayofrage

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