Western Antarctic ice sheet collapse has already begun, scientists warn

[BlasterBates]

UK GHG emissions are now increasing again.

http://http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/03/uk-greenhouse-gas-emissions-rose-in-2012-decc/

If you include indirect emissions i.e. due to manufactured goods outside the UK, GHG emissions are much higher. Outsourcing manufacturing doesn't reduce CO2 emissions it just moves them around.

[pjclarke]

True Dat.

Pass the Parcel | George Monbiot

Another reason Kyoto is a bust.

[DodgyAgent]

DA - Which part of 'reference please' is giving you the problem? ;-)

On the one hand we have several hundred academic studies with supporting field trials, every one of which has concluded that Ocean Fertilisation has limited feasibility as a large scale means of carbon sequestration; to have a even a minor impact we'd have to fertilise about a third of the oceans. Imagine spraying all the arable land in the world with Miracle-Gro and then picture the consequences for ecosystem balance.....

On the same hand we have a study on Geo-engineering co-ordinated by a Fellow of the Royal society, a Professor of Earth Sciences who has spent his working life in the field and a dozen other distinguished academics reveiwing hundreds of studies. This apparently qualifies as disinterest. Presumably this paper, from January, also qualifies ...

Potential climate engineering effectiveness and side effects during a high carbon dioxide-emission scenario : Nature Communications : Nature Publishing Group

On the other hand we have Dodgy and Mr. Sampath Kumar and his patented magic pond and aquarium plankton food. (Maybe his Wave Energy device will save us if the bug thing doesn't pan out). Hmmmm, tough one.

Kyoto was effectively dead in the water after the US, the Spiritual Home of Climate 'Scepticism', declined to ratify the treaty, however, and apologies for introducing some facts into a CUK General thread, the 'Annex 1' countries that did sign up comfortably exceeded their modest target of 4.2 % during commitment 1 phase, with an aggregate reduction of around 16%. Now this was mostly driven by the collapse of heavy industry in the Sovtiet Bloc, still the UK exceeded its targets, with a total of -19% reduction versus a target of -12.5%. Its not enough but it is not nothing either. And contrary to absurd 'back to the Stone Age' rhetoric it was achieved at a cost of a barely noticeable <0.1% of GDP.

For me, an interesting question is: why are the people who are or were asserting that there is no or insignificant risk from manmade climate change often the the same ones who are apparently willing to fund non-solutions to a non-problem?

You are determined to make an argument based on the technology that was used at the time of the OF trials - which was the dumping of iron into the sea. The technology that I am talking about is on a similar principle but with advancements that make it more effective.

I know you are so desperately rooting around to kill this one off but as I said before tests conducted have amounted to very little, those that have taken place have displayed positive, inconclusive and negative results. The idea is that you take the positives and try to overcome the negatives and then test it. This is similar to how you build a computer system or anything else for that matter.

As opposed to your method:

Take control of the problem
build and build the problem
Frighten everyone about the seriousness of the problem
Coerce vast sums of money to solve the problem
When the problem is not solved whine and whine that more money is needed.

I knew a contractor years ago who ran an IT system that was essential to a particular part of the business. He was the only one who knew anything about it. He added bits to it himself because he controlled it and he said that adding bits was the only way to deliver extra functionality whenever needed. His rate requirements were duly met and budgets allocated accordingly whenever changes were required. Any attempt to build a new system or train anyone else on how to maintain it was met with a barrier of hostility.

They called this system the AGW system

Then one day a team of IT developers including a contractor I knew walked in and showed the business a spec for developing a new system in 3 months to replace it. It was three months of hell (with the incumbent contractor digging in against the development) but they ended up with a new system with all the functionality that was needed, properly documented and anyone could maintain it/add functionality.

They called this the Geotechnical system from which came that popular cliche

"if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem".

[pjclarke]

The technology that I am talking about is on a similar principle but with advancements that make it more effective.

And I asked you for evidence to support that assertion, apparently something that seems to have been missed by all the world's oceanographers and marine biologists ....

[DodgyAgent]

And I asked you for evidence to support that assertion, apparently something that seems to have been missed by all the world's oceanographers and marine biologists ....

It has not been proven to work as a solution to removing CO2 on a large scale. My point is that it should be tested . It has been proven to work to clean up lakes and ponds and stimulate the growth of fish.

You are desperate top kill it aren't you? Why?

[pjclarke]

There once was a company running its operations on a mainframe, over time the code running some its more profitable activities started causing the CPU to overheat. Not too much at first but increasing over time as the activities grew.

Management called in expert hardware and software consultants to examine the problem, and 97% of them agreed that the problem was real, caused by the code, growing and if not checked could degrade the whole system, harming profitabilty, making the building uncomfortable, and in a worst case causing damage that would take decades to put right. They recommended refactoring the code to be more efficient and restructuring the business, at a cost of a few % of profits.

Unfortunately an action plan was not drawn up, and a small but vocal minority of shareholders pronounced themselves sceptical that the problem was real, some said the thermometers were reading wrong, others that sunlight was heating the casing, some that it was just a fluctuation within the normal limits of the system (anything other than it was the responsibility of the business), and there was therefore no need to do anything... some even illicitly obtained the consultants' email inboxes and pointed to isolated sentences that, out of context, seemed to show the experts were faking the data as part of some imagined conspiracy.

Then along came D. Agent, saying he had the answer, the invention of one Bob Nualgiwallah. It claimed to remove the excess heat, meaning the inefficient code could be kept running. The experts were sceptical, saying basically the same solution had been piloted, and that it could ever deliver more than a small cooling, but D. Agent was adamant that Bob's product was superior. 'It cooled his MacBook down, no bother' he told the shareholders ...

[pjclarke]

It has not been proven to work as a solution to removing CO2 on a large scale. My point is that it should be tested . It has been proven to work to clean up lakes and ponds and stimulate the growth of fish.

You are desperate top kill it aren't you? Why?

No I am not, OF may have a part to play, but it is in no way 'the solution'. Yes, at 10x the proposed open seas concentration and in closed water, this stuff unsurprisingly stimulates growth of beneficial diatoms. That is not controversial. But the marine problem is different, iron is the limiting nutrient, the LOHAFEX experiment was conducted in a silica-rich part of the ocean, extrapolating the result from that experiment, fertilising the entire available ocean area removes at the most optimistic estimate 1 Gt/yr of C, and may well cause the production of methane and NO2, not to mention nutrient depletion and hypoxia downstream, which might be a hard sell to people living and fishing in those waters....

[DodgyAgent]

No I am not, OF may have a part to play, but it is in no way 'the solution'. Yes, at 10x the proposed open seas concentration and in closed water, this stuff unsurprisingly stimulates growth of beneficial diatoms. That is not controversial. But the marine problem is different, iron is the limiting nutrient, the LOHAFEX experiment was conducted in a silica-rich part of the ocean, extrapolating the result from that experiment, fertilising the entire available ocean area removes at the most optimistic estimate 1 Gt/yr of C, and may well cause the production of methane and NO2, not to mention nutrient depletion and hypoxia downstream, which might be a hard sell to people living and fishing in those waters....

I explained the silicon factor to you earlier the product works by adding silica as well as iron!. I showed you the maths that suggested only 1.27 % of the ocean needed treating and as for your comments about methane : Diatoms will help reduce methane emissions from lakes and oceans.
Methane is produced by Methanogen bacteria, these are anaerobic bacteria and grow only when oxygen is not present. Diatoms increase DO and prevent Methanogens from growing and producing Methane, so only Aerobic bacteria will grow and produce CO2 and the CO2 will be consumed by Diatoms.

Methane is consumed by Methanotrops, these are aerobic bacteria and require oxygen. Diatoms will provide the oxygen required and Methanotrops will grow and consume the Methane being vented out of lakes and oceans.


You are still making assumptions about Nualgis effects based on analysis of iron fertilisation in a determined attempt to dismiss it. Again I will repeat;

It may well be that the product has little effect on reducing CO2 and it has not been trialled on any marine environment. There is however enough evidence of positive results from other similar (though primitive) versions of OF that it should be at least high on the agenda for trials. Furthermore the logic of the Science is perfectly sound - as even you are gradually having to admit- so there is no excuse particularly as the rest of the Scientific community has no other solution to offer to ignore it.

If it is proven to work on a small scale in a marine environment there is no reason why it could not be scaled up to be a "total solution" to reducing CO2

[doodab]

I explained the silicon factor to you earlier the product works by adding silica as well as iron!.

Surely testing iron in a silica rich environment amounts to much the same thing as testing iron + silica together, the only difference is that you don't need to add the silica because it's already there....

[pjclarke]

If it is proven to work on a small scale in a marine environment there is no reason why it could not be scaled up to be a "total solution" to reducing CO2

Cost?

I see Sampath is knocking the aquarium product out at $15 for 100ml. Using your figures, that gives an annual cost of $885 billion or $100 billion more than the total cost of Kyoto. Of course there would be economies of scale and we wouldn't pay retail, but even if we could reduce the cost down by a factor of 100, you could probably add carbon capture to the whole of China for that money ... just think of the Green Taxes you would have to ask for

And I've told you that the silicon issue is moot, also the fertilization process by design increases photosynthesis which releases oxygen, which rises up the water column causing anoxia in the deeper waters, which in turn shifts the bacterial population towards those that produce methane and NO2, both of which are stronger greenhouse gases than CO2 ...

Reference: http://m.avto.aslo.info/lo/toc/vol_36/issue_8/1928.pdf