Planktos iron dumping

Illegal, but they'll do it anyway

Posted by Gar Lipow (Guest Contributor) at 10:39 AM on 20 Jun 2007

Read more about: waste | oceans | geoengineering

According to the Vancouver Sun, Planktos is planning to continue its scheme to dump iron into the oceans off the Galapagos, even though the EPA has ruled it illegal. The EPA ruled in May that it needs a permit. Planktos CEO Russ George has a simple solution: hire a foreign vessel and fly a flag of convenience.

Ken Caldeira and Chris Field of the Carnegie Institute say that it is impossible to verify whether carbon is sequestrated, and that if it is, the added carbon will contribute to ocean acidification. Via ECT it turns out that as of June 19 Planktos still claims on its website to be using nano-particles of iron rather than regular iron dust. (It is pretty far down, so I suggest you use your browser's page search function.) Planktos has said publicly that they are not using nano-particles. Maybe they are just leaving the term on their website because it sounds cool -- which would not speak well for their integrity. Or maybe after taking major-league public hits they still have not gotten around to correcting their website -- which would not speak well for their competence. Or maybe they actually are planning to dump nano-particles of iron into the ocean, which would not speak well for their sanity.

At any rate, Jim Thomas of ETC has suggested to me that when they select their flag of convenience, they consider flying the skull and crossbones.

For story: Planktos iron dumping
5 Comments | Post a Comment

It's an interesting concept

(sorry, catching up with the science here)

On the acidification front, I suppose their hope is they'll get results like:
Iron --> Plankton pulling CO2 from ocean (ocean less acidic) --> Dead Plankton settling on the ocean bottom --> Sequestered carbon

The main argument against this might be that the plankton will pull CO2 from the air, then dissolve it back into the water as the plankton decomposes - ending up with more CO2 and less O2 deep at the bottom. If they were proposing a slow and gradual iron increase, I might be on their side - as long as O2 levels were monitored in the deep ocean. But a sudden dumping? If they're wrong, it sounds like they could mess up the local deep sea ecology for years.

by Matt G at 11:06 AM on 20 Jun 2007

nano-pirates

Actually, it might be a service to the world, if one could reduce the feckless and boring Johnny Depp to a microscopic state.

On nano-stuff:

Specifically, this experimental dumping of nano-iron into the Ocean, behind which no doubt lies huge amounts of scientific wisdom, is intellectually analogous to the release of non-native species into new environments, in order to put right some defect -- e.g. starlings, mongooses and cane toads. This subject came up in a recent post by Erik Hoffner. It remains unclear whether any intentional release of a non-native species has worked well.
More generally, I happen to belong to the class of people who get the creeps whenever we hear a word prefixed with "nano." So, I ask two questions: first, are there a lot of other people like me in this regard?; and second, are the people who put great hopes in nano-technology truly sound and reasonable and trustworthy?

By the way, within the Tyrannosauridae, the granola paleontologist Robert Bakker erected a number of years ago (1988) a new genus and species, Nanotyrannus lancensis, on the basis of a diminutive skeleton with tyrannosaur affinities, which earlier had been considered a baby Albertosaurus.

Cute. One wonders if it would have made a good pet. Even so, I doubt Little Dog would like having one around.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 12:08 PM on 20 Jun 2007

Well pretty much

Here's one of the most critical comments I've heard on Planktos.

-David Ahlport

by GreyFlcn at 9:35 PM on 20 Jun 2007
[ Parent ]

Integrity +

>> which would not speak well for their integrity

Planktos is the only ethical organisation with a worthwhile solution, and yet as per usual, the rest of the world puts them down.

I understand !, Y'all really want this world to end.

Well so be it... I am not of this place.

>> catching up with the science here)

don't bother there isn't any, and any suppositions made will be entirely off the truth, dangerously so.

by JohnCaley at 4:07 AM on 21 Jun 2007

think positively, dammit! What could go wrong?

This the kind of optimistic can-do crap they used to do in the former Soviet Union; when something caused an environmental mess, instead of backing off, they just came up with another brilliant solution to fix that problem; which caused its own environmental mess, which required its own brilliant solution; etc., continue until you have the environmental disaster known as the former Soviet Union.

See also: "The surge will succeed in Iraq".

by gzuckier at 11:22 AM on 27 Jul 2007

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