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Hungry Crustaceans Eat Climate Change Experiment
Earlier this month, an expedition fertilized 300 square kilometers of the Atlantic Ocean with six metric tons of dissolved iron. This triggered a bloom of phytoplankton, which doubled their biomass within two weeks by taking in carbon dioxide from the seawater. The dead phytoplankton were then expected to sink to the ocean bed, dragging carbon along with them. Instead, the experiment turned into an example of how the food chain works, as the bloom was eaten by a swarm of hungry copepods. The huge swarm of copepods were in turn eaten by larger crustaceans called amphipods, which are often eaten by squid and whales. "I think we are seeing the last gasps of ocean iron fertilization as a carbon storage strategy," says Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University. While the experiment failed to show ocean fertilization as a viable carbon storage strategy, it has pushed the old "My dog ate my homework" excuse to an unprecedented level.
The copepods ate my project. Try that one on your thesis advisor....
Still and all, that's why they do experiments. Sometimes you learn something.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
What happened to the carbon?
The carbon is still being sequestered, just not where they expected it.
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Why are well-fed whales a bad thing?
No sig today...
Skinner: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
Whale i'll be damned!
Now Zoidberg is a homeowner!
caritj.org
Horray for Zoidberg!
So basically, the experiment was infected. Maybe they should try seeding smaller areas, lessening the chance of an infection spreading over the whole seeding zone.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I don't see why the conversion of carbon into biomass in any way negates their stated goals.
This triggered a bloom of phytoplankton, which doubled their biomass within two weeks by taking in carbon dioxide from the seawater. The dead phytoplankton were then expected to sink to the ocean bed, dragging carbon along with them.
It seems all we have to do is wait for some whales to come along and eat the amphipods, then kill off a few of the whales and sink them to the bottom of the ocean: Carbon sequestered.
and clearly it WANTS global warming.
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It's hard to believe nobody saw this coming. Hey, let's create a massive amount of food in the ocean and let it sink to the bottom. Did they think the ocean dwellers were just going to let it be for the sake of science or something?
I don't know, it sounds kinda stupid to me.
"Mom, I want to see how dog food reacts to the sun, so I'm going to fill Sparky's bowl and let it sit for a week."
Next day. "Mom, Sparky ate the dog food." Duh? :)
Hm... While it might very well make a decent sequel, they'll need to talk to marketing to come up with a better name. I mean, Hungry Hungry Hippos had the entire alliteration thing going for it, but I can't see anyone buying something with as unwieldy of a name as Hungry Hungry Crustaceans.
Not only that, but the fact that goal is to eat climate change experiments won't fly in the current eco-conscious culture.
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
It's now going on 10 years that I've been saying the folks criticizing iron fertilization on the grounds that it might not sequester carbon are trying to destroy the Amazon rainforest, Subsaharan Africa's wild species and coastal ecosystems so that they can malnurish most of humanity -- they should therefore be taken out to the parking-lot and summarily shot. Well, ok, maybe that's a little harsh, but how about beating them to a bloody pulp or whatever it takes to STOP THEM?
Seastead this.
But isn't there a threat that fish populations are on steady decline?
Wouldn't the fertilization technology be better applied to oceanic fisheries instead?
For countries that consume large quantities of shellfish and crustaceans, like Japan and China, this kind of technology could drastically improve the economy.
Additionally, while it may not take carbon out of the total environment, as long as it is in plankton and crabs, it is NOT in the atmosphere, and thus, NOT contributing to global warming. This increases the earth's tolerance to the higher carbon content.
From the results of the experiment, apparently it won't work as a means to sequester carbon.
However, what if we can use this to improve the productivity of the ocean in general? Might the increased amount of biomass serve to improve fisheries? I.e., if there's more food all the way up the food chain, can't we eat more fish? It's a hungry planet and many fisheries have been depleted....
--PeterM
...with algae?
I'm not a biologist or ecologist, but doesn't the ocean food chain start with algae? And don't algae produce oxygen from CO2 instead of sequestering it like phytoplankton?
Can't we fertilize parts of the ocean for plant growth instead?
FanFictionRecs.net
That's fine in theory, but there are too many pollutants to eat, at least wild, fish on a regular basis. In a controlled setting fish farms work pretty much anywhere if you have the water supply, in fact I'd prefer if they were only allowed on land. Lets give the ocean a break for a while, we've reaped its loins for far too long. Plus all the dumping...
What in blue blazes are you talking about?
Brett
First, it looks to me like the experiment broke for the same reason that earlier experiments had. Once you seed sea water with enough iron, the growing algae eventually consumes available silica. The algae observed in the experiment were less silica-rich (ie, they weren't diatoms) and hence easier to feed upon. Having to add silica makes the logistics much harder, since you need considerable quantities of silica. Second, heavy grazing doesn't imply that the researchers failed in their goal of creating a carbon sink. Not all of the food chain would have been eaten by higher up. Probably a lot of those algae and animals ended up on the sea bed floor. The problem though is that you can't then estimate well how much carbon was deposited on the ocean floor. In other words, the experiment might have worked anyway to lock away a considerable amount of CO2, but as is, it can't be used as a consistent carbon sink in a human carbon management program.
Third, grazing is going to be a fundamental problem unless somehow plankton is seperated from the algae. I bet there is plankton that will eat diatoms too. The grazer problem will affect any program that attempts to carbon sink via ocean grown algae blooms.
Perhaps. I suspect it'll just make a new sub-species of fat, lazy whales.
$#@&*!$ lazy-ass whales.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
So right you are ! If there's one thing we've all learned from the financial crisis is that industry is fully capable of regulating itself without any government oversight.
"Instead they experiment turned into an example of how the food chain works as the bloom was eaten by a swarm of hungry copepods."
Shouldn't they be the?
Just sayin..
-charlotte
I hear they taste like fishy beef.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Yeah, since we thought we'd have enough of this stuff to stop climate change, let's use it for creating seafood. Then when the end comes, we can all wave and say "So long, and thanks for all the fish."
See my video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8Rhu5llh1k&feature=channel_page
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This may be a good method to help parts of the ocean where the food chain is in trouble.
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
Geeks think they know everything and if they are not stopped, they will cause devastating damage one day with another idiotic scheme designed to solve a non existent problem. Today is Carbon Sequestration tomorrow who knows.
I have to repeat what an earlier poster said, they, the bumbling fools who conducted this experiment and used the ocean as its vitctim, were outsmarted by a creature without a brain, thank f'ing god.
Of course all you dopes will speculate on this as you pretend to have authority but when it comes down to it, you really dont know shit!
Did you really think those two subs colided? Of course not. They were raped!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Perhaps. I suspect it'll just make a new sub-species of fat, lazy whales.
Americans? *rimshot*
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I can't believe it! A slashdot headline that mentioned global warming, but does not include a global warming debate in the comments. How do I submit this as a story?
If only there were self-replicating containers that could extract carbon from the atmosphere and store it as a solid...
Some scientists still think the whole CO2 causes Global Warming thing is a bunch of crap anyway, likely invented to conceive of a new way to tax the populace and give an excuse to forcibly reduce the population of the world. See lecture by Professor Bob Carter on Global Warming.
~ awaiting spiritual enlightenment ~
You worked really hard to get that in there. You should have worked really much harder.
. . . to cause a world iron shortage.
Some scientists think the Earth is hollow, or 6,000 years old. They probably have alarmist YouTube videos as well.
YMMV but usually you can use a single experiment to disprove an hypothese.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
A feast of amphipods for all!
I've been wondering, wouldn't this make a great way to produce an artificial fishery out in the middle of nowhere? You'd probably have to put some work into selecting your upper level consumers, to get, say, sardines instead of jellyfish. But surely there must be a way to divert some of that biomass bloom into something harvestable.
OK, so squid and whales eat the amphipods and turn the carbon into whale and squid shit and then either the whales and squid are caught and eaten or die and sink to the bottom and are eaten down there.
Where is the failure in the carbon storage strategy?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Diatoms have been the limiting factor in ocean fertilization recentlly, fears you will throw off the ecosystem by proliferating potentially harmful diatoms. The fact that this wasn't found is a success! Organisms will eat the plankton...no surprise. However, that doesn't mean its a failure! Fish are not 100% efficient at using all organic mater from the food they eat. Anywhere from ~30- 50% of the small percent of the plankton that is eaten is still going to be released as ORGANIC waste which will then fall to the bottom of the ocean sequestering carbon.
This is like being against tree planting because it encourages bugs to come eat the leaves, birds to eat the bugs, and bacteria that eat the dead leaves
In ocean seeding theory, it would not be done in areas where there are many fish around to eat the plankton. The idea is to seed 'dead' areas of the tropic ocean where fish typically avoid because of its lack of iron. I believe in practice the idea is to seed very large areas of the ocean with less intensity than this experiment. I.E slowly release Fe off the back of shipping vessels for 100's of miles Regardless, i believe an externality of this is potentially treating some of the effects of overfishing.
Encouraging the ocean to absorb CO2 (NOT HYDROCARBONS!!) boosts its acidity. Unless someone has a reference on this, their suggestion is entirely wrong. The article they reference does not mention anything about this! Yes, CO2 increases in the ocean lead to carbonic acid and increase its acidity. But, fertilization TURNS THE CO2 into ORGANIC MATERIAL! Organic material DOES NOT INCREASE ACIDITY of the ocean, please read any book on photosynthesis.
I feel this article shows signs of some hard bias against ocean fertilization and I'm not sure why.
The path just was not a direct one to the ocean.
Besides, if you can feed the whales (read help an endangered species) at the same time, is this truly a bad thing?
From the results of the experiment, apparently it won't work as a means to sequester carbon.
However, what if we can use this to improve the productivity of the ocean in general? Might the increased amount of biomass serve to improve fisheries? I.e., if there's more food all the way up the food chain, can't we eat more fish? It's a hungry planet and many fisheries have been depleted....
--PeterM
I'd rather be fertilizing the oceans with treated sewage and land runoff - iron powder gets expensive after a while.
Might the increased amount of biomass serve to improve fisheries?
It has been proposed for years. But it is (1) not economical compared to fish farming and (2) you're just as likely to get, from blooms, lots and lots and lots of jellyfish.
You think the Queen of England is involved? ...take the Red pill ;)
~ awaiting spiritual enlightenment ~
At least the experiment showed how easy it is to make seafood for anyone planning to build an ocean city-state (www.seasteading.org).
I am amazed that they think that it failed. Many of the higher organisms WILL die AND fall to the bottom. What just happened is that we showed that we can restore a big part of the ocean with this approach, which will create rich feeding grounds, which will also pull carbon out of the ocean, just a bit delayed.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Apparently they're currently working on mass graves at national cemetaries across the US. Should reduce the carbon footprint by quite a bit, they just have to get the bodies now. Take the Red pill.
~ awaiting spiritual enlightenment ~
It seems to me that people, scientists included, have lost or are losing their minds. I cannot believe people are seriously discussing the merits or otherwise of this idiotic and totally cretinous experiment.
Yes, according to an insider of the "elite" ...take the Red pill.
~ awaiting spiritual enlightenment ~
The hypothesis supposed that the plankton would fall to the bottom of the ocean and ultimately turn into oil. Instead the biomass is being turned into energy by large predators, to do this they release CO2 that was stored in the biomass back into the environment.
By the way: It isn't a TOTAL failure at sequestration. The predators don't get it ALL.
It's just nowhere NEAR as good as they thought it would be (because the predators get, and eventually release, A LOT, maybe even MOST, of the carbon.)
It will be interesting to see if the amount of carbon that DOES make it to the bottom and out of circulation for geologic time is less than the lossage due to releasing some of it as methane, which has several times the greenhouse effect of an equivalent amount of carbon as CO2. "My dog wrecked my homework project by farting." is an even worse excuse.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I wonder where copepods poop goes...or the poop of the things that eat the copepods.
For a site of news for nerds you guys sure have a tough time understanding pretty simple scientific principles like conservation of matter.
"oh no the carbon goes through a layer or two more of the food chain before it settles to the ocean floor!!! The Horror!!!"
We just need to quit dumping our garbage in there. Does that make sense? Or is it just another one of my wild dreams?
What?
So why not use iron phosphate to encourage cyanobacteria and kill everything in the water? You wouldn't have to worry about predators...
Those crustaceans do something called "breathing", which means: sucking oxygen out of the atmosphere and replacing it with CO2. So we are back where we started.
We aren't planting 10 trees each per year for carbon storage because trees are not a long-term storage place. Yes, trees absorb carbon as they grow, but when they reach maturity they become carbon-neutral. When the tree dies it releases all that stored carbon as it decomposes.
What some want to do is chop down and bury mature trees then grow new ones.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If you don't know science it may be a failure but if you do know science it's not. The researchers had a hypothesis they wanted to test and when they did they got results they did expect so now they know they need to adjust the hypothesis.
Granted, the carbon didn't sink to the bottom of the ocean, but it was still removed from the water
Carbon was only temporarily removed from water, when the plankton dies it releases some carbon back into water. The only effective way for carbon to be removed is if it is taken out of the system and that's what sinking does. A question arises though with what happens to the seafloor when carbon builds up there?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The original experiment was flawed to begin with. What end point did they expect? The dead plankton vanished out of existence once it reached the ocean bottom?
Now, instead of dead plankton sitting on the bottom (which eventually would be turned back to free CO2/bicarbonate dissolved in the ocean once bacteria had finished decomposing it), it's swimming around under the ocean surface as fish and other life forms that are a little less hungry than before. What's the difference? Oh, and those fish will eventually die and be consumed by saprophytic bacteria, too. And the carbon goes right back into the water.
Perhaps some people can see the bright side - in increasing the food supply for higher organisms, some shellfish will benefit and grow nice, healthy shells, and some quantity of CO2 will be "permanently" fixed into those shells that don't dissolve too well in sea water and are quite indigestible to boot. However I doubt very much that this represents a significant amount of carbon- certainly not worth the expense of dumping iron into the ocean at regular intervals. It takes a great deal of "CO2 producing fuels" to mine, refine, dissolve, transport and distribute all that iron.
I can't believe someone actually put up money to fund something like this. It puts American banks to shame. Don't they teach the "carbon cycle" and the concept of "conservation of matter" in high schools anymore? Even the limestone on the sea bottom will eventually get back into the atmosphere as it is subducted and the CO2 produced when it breaks down in the magma is eventually blown back into the atmosphere by vulcanism. However we humans are little concerned with geological time. MATTER CANNOT BE CREATED OR DESTROYED. I would have expected something better from Stanford... but then again, maybe not. Glad I got my doctorate elsewhere.
Oh, and to all the CO2 from fossil fuels is producing global warming preachers - where do you think those fossil fuels came from in the first place? It magically appeared underground, or "God" put it there? THE NET AMOUNT OF CARBON ON PLANET EARTH IS FIXED. The CO2 that is currently underground as oil was once in the atmosphere. Logically there is LESS CO2 in the air and oceans today than X million years ago - when petroleum didn't exist. Since the Earth has obviously managed to support many forms of life during that time, I wouldn't bank on the end of the world just yet, even if we nasty humans manage to "liberate" all the CO2 available. But some people just can't use their heads. Maybe they should go to Stanford.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's less than clear that carbon on the ocean's floor is just removed from the system.
At a big enough scale carbon isn't removed from the system but at lower scales, such as the surface of the oceans, it is removed.
we know we have a lot of knowledge gaps about deep ocean-floor ecology
Elsewhere I brought this up.
So, we try the next experiment
Yeap! That's what science is supposed to do. Make a hypothesis and test it. If it doesn't work, as in this case, modify it and test again. Keep doing that until it doesn't fail, if it keeps on failing then start with a new hypothesis.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
We think we know so much but in reality we know so little. Every generation that passes proves how much we don't know but the current generation think they know so much that they make assumptions, rules and other things that harms us later.
In this case, we have part of good story but didn't figure all of the animals that can affect this project.
Live and learn.
"This experiment has proved that iron fertilization is not going to work as a carbon storage strategy."
It did no such thing.
If this was done in the middle of the ocean, in deep water, then it might not be such a hot idea.
But what if you do it in CORAL RICH areas? Can the phytoplankton be eaten by corals? If so, then the bulk of the carbon absorbed would be deposited in the form of coral skeletons(calcium carbonate) that persist for millions of years. Sounds like a handy place to store carbon to me.
The idea just needed to be focused in a different way, maybe...
How about feeding captive mollusk beds(clams, mussels, oysters...) with phytoplankton? Eat the good part, then bury the shells. Food AND carbon sequestration.
I told you saving the whales was a bad idea!
Might the increased amount of biomass serve to improve fisheries?
..But it is (1) not economical compared to fish farming
The thing is is if it's not economical to improve fisheries it's not economical to fish farm either. First is the feed, what farmed fish eat. Carnivorous fish is what's farmed yet for every pound of yield can take several pounds to produce. Another problem is because of the packed conditions farmed fish require large amounts of antibiotics which among other things reduces the effectiveness of those antibiotics. A third problem with fish farming is that it creates dead zones. All of these together means it takes more to farm fish than it does to catch wild fish.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I'd rather be fertilizing the oceans with treated sewage and land runoff - iron powder gets expensive after a while.
That can have negative impacts. All that runoff and sewage creates Dead Zones where fish can not live. The Dead Zone created by the runoff from the Mississippi River is 6,000-7,000 square miles and is growing. Runoff may also create red tide.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
This experiment solves two problems, the additional acidity added to the ocean as CO2 transfers to water bodies and any potential food shortages possible with the next several decades of global cooling. The global cooling is predicted by independent physicists from Europe and Siberia is based on solar changes and terrestial interactions as the primary factors in climate change and is likely to be demonstrated one way or the other over the next 10 years.
So right you are ! If there's one thing we've all learned from the financial crisis is that industry is fully capable of regulating itself without any government oversight.
Under President Bush government increased regulations more than LBJ or Nixon. There was no deregulation under Bush, though there was under Clinton.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It's like a stimulus plan for the Ocean!
Your brain is not a computer.
Personally, I think that most if not all carbon storage strategies do not work.
Buy a 5lb bag of charcoal. Bury it in your backyard. Voila! Five pounds of carbon have been sequestered. And if it turns out that the climate cools (a la ”Fallen Angels“), dig up the charcoal and light up.
...Whale farts. New Zealand's sheep emissions pale in comparison.
- T
Why did I read that headline as "Hungry Crustaceans Eat Climate Change Scientist"?
Conifers are darker than grass. Plant large areas to conifers, and you lower the albedo of the planet. Which
increases the temperature.
Increasing the temperature at arctic latitudes, allows the tree line to move north, taking over relatively light areas of gravel and peat bog and turning them into dark forests.
This increases global warming...
Putting wood and paper in land fills actaully does do a pretty good job of sequestering it. Most landfills are anerobic, and while there is some methane production, most of the carbon just sits there. Saw a story about 50 year old newspapers pulled from an LA landfill still quite readable.
An even better way to sequester carbon is to turn it into charcoal, and mix it into the soil. Charcoal has a very long residence time in the soil, and acts as a sponge for nutrients, reducing leaching.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
The VAST majority of Carbon is in carbonate rocks.
While the amount of carbon is fixed, the fraction of it that is CO2 is not fixed. The fraction of CO2 that is in the atmosphere is not fixed.
There are various cycles that work on different time
scales.
In a temperate deciduous forest there is a
day cycle:
leaf absorbes CO2 during the day converting it
into sugar. Releases CO2 during the night as chemical
reactions continue. The surplus is turned to leaf and
exported to the rest of the tree.
year cycle:
Tree converts CO2 + water into leaf. Leaf falls off tree
and rots, becomes worm food, fungi food.
century cycle:
tree grows up puts on mass. Dies, falls.
ocean cycle:
CO2 is stored in surface water surface water is mixed deeper by wind and current action. In this way the top 400 meters of ocean is at equibrium with the atmosphere with about a 60 year time constant.
ocean deep cycle:
Water mixing to deeper levels seems to take longer. I think I read an estimate of around 12,000 years.
rock cycle:
Carbonate rocks subducted at edge of plates. Magma heat
diassociates carbonates. CO2 released in volcanoes.
CO2 taken up by algae, fall to bottom of sea. Time and presure form carbonate rocks. Residence time millions of years.
So long term solutions lie in understanding the residence time of these various cycles, and giving them a nudge toward the pools that make it a less immediate problem.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
I wonder how much was spent relearning that the food chain exists and nature takes care of itself. Just like I was taught in 5th grade.
And are these the same people we're supposed to believe when they tell us global warming is caused solely by people and that people can control it?? We should be very afraid that there are a whole bunch of well intentioned idiots out there that don't seem to know or care what they could screw up.
From the article:
"Lohafex researchers say the results suggest that using iron fertilisation to increase the ocean carbon sink would rely on a complex chain of events, making it difficult to control."
Since biology has no first principles (like say physics, math, ...), has the barest understanding of the ocean's ecosystems, an even lesser understanding of the ocean's role in climate, how can this possibly be a surprise. Oh, guess what, the experiment was retried a few weeks later but failed to reproduce because "most probably " the AREA WAS SATURATED WITH IRON. Isn't that alarming both of the fact and that the experimenters don't know for sure?
Conclusion: these ill-concieved experiments have commercial interests. Companies hope to profit on carbon credits.
So, in a nutshell, willful pollution of the ocean with little thought of impact all in the name of profit.
Give me climate change thanks.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Perhaps the phytoplankton could be used as a simple fuel source for steam generation/electric generation? At least then we wouldn't be adding more CO2 to the air.
Sorry, but I may be wrong on this but it seems to me that the experiment was in fact a success, not a failure.
After all, do not phytoplankton use carbon dioxide to grow and multiply? For there to be a "bloom" after the seeding by Fe there had to be surge in growth in size and quantity.
What happened here is unexpected, but in no way a failure.
So instead of sinking to the bottom, the sequestered CO2 is instead used in the food chain. No different that for plants on land.
Creating carbonates via an exothermic process is needed. It would allow us to sequester carbon from the cycle.
Some ideas on this under 37.1.3.3 - Removing CO2 from the Carbon-Cycle at Large at:
http://www.eventlister.com/resources/doc.php?PageType=DocumentManage&DocID=6
As far as other above mention ideas of the biomass just rotting, even if in a poop-filled-meat-knot (think food tube of your or your neighbor's cow), and releasing the carbon back into the cycle eventually: couldn't such biomass be harvested and rotted in an enclosed area so that CO2 is collected and processed? Even natural ocean algae blooms rot each year, could these be harvested or would their loss affect the food/life chain too greatly? We could at least re-release all the other nutrient minerals from the processed-biomass, such as phosphorus, iron, nitrogen, etc.
Another comment on a repeatedly mentioned topic of carbon compounds just dissolving in the ocean before the hit floor-bottom: If we, civilization, manufacture carbonates we don't have to release them into the ocean. We could store them on land in: salt mines, collapsing coal mines, etc. Even if we don't manufacture them and life in the ocean does, we may still be able to harvest them somehow.
Somehow CO2 was converted into, or maybe just created, limestone and dolomite flowstone at the melt of snowball earth. Could we create a similar process manually to sequester carbon? I had been considering an artificial method of exposing CO2 to limestone or better (thinking that a concentrated CO2 atmosphere could be created and then water misted through it (like in a cooling tower) could dissolve limestone at the bottom). I don't see how this processes sequesters carbon though, because the limestone is limestone at the beginning and end, just not the middle when it is in solution. Unless the input product in the snowball earth situation is not limestone but another mineral and carbon is added to make the final limestone carbonate.
1. Free-Carbon Abundance Pollution, Tax Credits for Carbon Sequestering, Carbon Footprint Trading Marketplace
2. Create & Store Carbonates
3. Profit!
4. ??
We could just make self-replicating, solar-powered, carbon dioxide atmospheric scrubbers. Oh yeah, that's plants.....
Louy