Hal Plotkin has written an informative piece for SF Gate about a controversial new technique for seeding plankton growth in our oceans.
See:
Ocean Rescue
Planktos Foundation hopes to reduce global warming by fertilizing the seas.
A group of scientists say it may be possible to simultaneously reduce global warming and increase dwindling supplies of fish around the world by adding relatively tiny amounts of powdered iron to the ocean.
Although the concept is controversial, several demonstration experiments have already been conducted, including by the Half Moon Bay-based Planktos Foundation, which hopes to eventually turn the cultivation of plankton forests at sea into an environmental-restoration business similar to reforestation on land.
The proposal has sparked considerable debate within the scientific and environmental communities, in part, because some energy and oil companies see it as a possible way to offset atmospheric pollution caused by their products. If it works, its backers say, the idea could help save humanity from the twin dangers of dying oceans and an overheated planet. On the other hand, others see it as an unworkable scheme that would interfere with nature, one that could lead to consequences even more dire than those it seeks to address.
I’ve heard that the prion diseases may not be caused by infectious agents, but by anticholinergic concentrations of either aluminum or pesticide residues with similar action. The Ecologist magazine has at least one good article on this.
Thanks for the iron fertilization link. While risky, It may be the only profitable, therefore do-able, CO2 and greenhouse effect reduction method.
It also might help restore ocean fisheries. Debbie Mackenzie’s fisherycrisis.xxx has some interesting data on CO2 rise patterns and fishing pressure, and on un-noticed possible effects of heavy fishing – the more I look at her writings and related articles by others on the web, the more I think she’s right.
BC