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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.
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.
Horray for Zoidberg!
Absolutely. Sometimes you do learn something completely new. And that's great. But the true power of the experiment is in proving that some idea is wrong.
This experiment has proved that iron fertilization is not going to work as a carbon storage strategy. Personally, I think that more experiments like this will show that most if not all carbon storage strategies do not work. But that's just me talking. Again, you need a good, solid, experiment to show something either way. Rhetoric, statistics, or celebrity backing isn't going to prove anything. Only the experiment can be the final arbiter.
In recent years, I have seen field after field all but abandon the experiment as a scientific tool. Computer models, statistics and dubious mathematics became the tools of choice. It's nice to see one in the news again.
May the Maths Be with you!
From TFA: The tiny crustaceans graze on phytoplankton, which keeps the carbon in the food chain and prevents it from being stored in the ocean sink. The goal was to get the carbon out of the food chain and dormant on the ocean floor.
Thank you. I was just going to post something about how this shouldn't be tagged "fail". It isn't a "failed" experiment. It's an experiment that yielded a negative result, which can be just as useful, if less flashy and exciting, than a positive one.
This experiment didn't prove that iron fertilization is never going to work as a carbon storage strategy. It showed that, in this situation, the plan didn't work as they thought it would; that hardly means that the strategy itself is unsound. Perhaps the iron seeding needs to be done in areas with lower predator populations. Perhaps they can add something with the iron the drives the predators away. Perhaps... they need to do more research before they say what is and isn't possible.
Just because it didn't work this time doesn't mean the idea should be abandoned, as the researchers themselves seem to indicate. Besides, saying that a single experiment proves anything is at least as unscientific as using models and statistics to do research.
"Personally, I think that more experiments like this will show that most if not all carbon storage strategies do not work."
So why aren't we, personally, planting 10 trees each year? Isn't that a carbon storage strategy, with free oxygen and built-in cooling?
It isn't clear to me why this is a failure, or a negative result if you prefer. Granted, the carbon didn't sink to the bottom of the ocean, but it was still removed from the water, which should allow the water to absorb additional CO2 from the air. It seems to me that, so long as the CO2 is pulled from the atmosphere, it's still an effective means of combating warming. Isn't one of the proposed remedies to increase the plant mass? Why isn't this just as effective as increased plants? What am I missing?
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
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 dunno about less exciting. Since it boosts the food supply from the bottom of the chain, it might be quite a helpful way to repair the damage to sea populations due to serious mismanagement in the past. A temporary boost to the food chain might be exactly what is required.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The problem is that a lot of tree planting exercises involve slim, fast-growing trees that absorb little CO2 but do absorb excessive soil nutrients. These trees have a short life-expectancy and usually end up getting dumped in land-fills where they replenish the CO2 in the air.
You have to use much slower-growing trees. The bulkier the better, the longer-living the better. I've found Californian Redwoods grow great even in the north of England (which is no great surprise, as prior to the Ice Age that was part of their territory) and it was fine to take them into the country when I last checked (no parasites and no known conflicts with native species - or, since it's a re-introduction, other native species).
Also in England, I would strongly advise planting English Oaks. They're getting rare as it is, but they are also one of the more long-lived of the oak family and again should be excellent carbon sinks.
In the US, as bristlecone pines operate best in areas most other species cannot survive in, I would imagine that it would be possible to increase their range without causing too much of an environmental problem.
Wollemi Pines might also be a good bet, as there is no risk of them getting out of control (they can't compete with flowering trees or plants) and again there should be an extremely low risk of problematic parasites.
If you like getting real christmas trees, get one with roots. Even if only one in a hundred make it through christmas intact, that would still be a massive cut in the CO2 injected back into the atmosphere. (Some places dump trees in lakes, but that acidifies the lakes and probably causes all kinds of other environmental problems.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I don't even see how this yielded negative results. What did they expect would happen? I mean the summary says they expected the dead phytoplankton to sink to the bottom of the ocean. Ok, so instead it was eaten, how is that negative? Isn't the carbon still sequestered away inside the crustaceans? If so, how is this negative or a failure again?
There has to be something missing here like that the crustaceans suddenly started flying and farting...or something. Otherwise, it looks like it was a win and nobody has recognized it as such.
Anyone?
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.
Good question!! Here's why:
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.
Biomass is a great way to TEMPORARILY sequester CO2, but unless you can remove the biomass from the rest of the biosphere (where it will be used) the CO2 will be released as the biomass is converted into energy.
The experiment thought they could move the biomass low enough in the water column that it would no longer be used by other creatures.