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How Sperm Whales Offset Their Carbon Footprint
Boy Wunda writes "Scientists at Flinders University in South Australia found that in an awesome example of design by Mother Nature, Southern Ocean sperm whales offset their carbon footprint by simply defecating – an action that releases tons of iron a year and stimulates the growth of phytoplankton which absorb and trap carbon dioxide. If only we humans could say the same for our poop, which really doesn't do much more than just sit there." I'm going to do my part by buying some iron supplements and a can of chili, and heading off toward the ocean.
How about you do your part by buying a cheap .22 caliber pistol and blowing your brains out?
...releases tons of iron a year and stimulates the growth of phytoplankton which absorb and trap carbon dioxide
Note to self: read the summary.
If your poop "just sits there" try going *in* the toilet next time, not beside it. If you can make that work, your poop will magically be whisked away and probably end up in a digester somewhere making methane, or possibly being reprocessed into fertilizer. Behold, the secret life of poop!
I wonder how long it will take for someone to suggest dumping raw sewage into the oceans in an effort to reduce our carbon footprint ...
So basically, according to Mother Nature, we aren't worth our weight in shit?
This sounds almost religiously stupid. I doubt mother nature cares about us or the level of CO2.
Should we take mother nature at her word and send our untreated sewage into the ocean so we can be like the whales?
Anything that doesn't use fossil fuel (directly or indirectly) is already pretty much carbon neutral over its lifespan. .The O2/CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been more or less in balance for millions of years,
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
"...in an awesome example of design by Mother Nature..." Please tell me this was artistic license on the part of the author, and not the actual words of a researcher on the project.
If only we humans could say the same for our poop, which really doesn't do much more than just sit there.
As humans, aren't we a little too hard on ourselves? First, we criticize ourselves for cutting down trees. Then, we criticize ourselves for global warming. Now, we criticize ourselves because our poops suck? Sheesh. When will it end?
Sperm whales have a carbon footprint? What? From the Hummers they're driving, or all the coal-burning power plants they've built?
I know this is Idle on Slashdot, but man, that is the dumbest headline I've seen in a while.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnmMNdiCz_s#t=2m36s
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Except it really doesn't work. We've tried.
http://green.autoblog.com/2009/05/08/newsflash-dumping-iron-filings-into-ocean-wont-reduce-co-sub-2/
It had been proposed sometime ago that geoengineering might help fight global warming. One plan in particular that drew a lot of attention was the dumping of hundreds of tons of iron filings into the ocean. Through wave action, the seas absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and the theory went that iron dumping would encourage phytoplankton population growth which would, in combination with zooplankton, take in CO2 and deposit it on the bottom of the briny deep. ... ...
While it seems that impressive bio-blooms could be created, much of the zooplankton poop and other carbons bits didn't create the strong sedimentation effect expected on the briny bottom.
Other stories here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16390-climate-fix-ship-sets-sail-with-plan-to-dump-iron.html
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
There is nothing new about Iron Seeding, except the people who decry it as something that will destroy our oceans and strip it of oxygen.
This is simply Iron Seeding from a biological standpoint.
In fact, Iron Seeding is something we probably should be doing to help sequester carbon.
Recent url of interest here.
How long before someone decides that we need to do a DNA makeover so that we humans will produce whale shit?
Your children will sit down, and drop a half-ton of half digested krill. Combine this with those low-flush toilets mandated by law, and you just know that a disaster is just waiting to happen.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
>I'm going to do my part by buying some iron supplements and a can of chili, and heading off towards the ocean.
Men and children should not take iron supplements beyond what is found in food as it can be dangerous. Women, who lose some blood on a monthly basis, can take iron supplements. Consult with your physician.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
These whales aren't reducing their carbon footprint, they're farming. They're fertilizing the fields of phytoplankton, which works it way back up the food chain.
You must be new here...
Wow. Organisms that are part of a balanced ecosystem are in fact in balance with their surrounding ecosystem. What's next? The revelation that planets in orbit around the sun do not in fact fly off into space because they follow a curved path centered around the parent body? Must be a slow news day.
Don't they do the same thing?
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
Whales are so cool. I bet they'd know how to fix the Louisiana BP/Deep Water Horizon fiasco too.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
That's a load of crap!
Humans are Mother Nature's way of bringing nature back into balance by returning carbon to the biosphere that has been remove by millions of years of sedimentation. Isn't in incredible how ingenious Mother Nature is? After all, back when nature was REALLY in balance (back when there were only one-celled organisms) there was much more carbon in the atmosphere. Things didn't change much for millions of years at a time because all of that great natural balance.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
What I want to know is where the iron is supposed to have come from. Several sources I have read have neatly ignored this.
Sperm whales (or any other whales for that matter) do not manufacture iron. They must take it in in their diet. Surely this means that iron is just being circulated around? Perhaps the whale takes iron that would otherwise fall to the ocean floor and circulates it back to the surface?
"They've well and truly bypassed being carbon neutral. They've actually gone one step further,"
What? They did? Fuck me. What is the point of this article? The whales don't know anything about this, they're just taking a shit. Maybe this supports seeding the ocean with iron, but I bet the same authors would blanch at that idea. This is just useless, idealistic drivel. Jesus Christ, slashdot.
So? Iron as a source of phytoplankton blooms, and phytoplankton as a carbon sink isn't news. The "news" is that whales are doing this, and in uselessly small numbers. Tell me what I missed.
Of course human "poop" has a similar role; the waste of every single organism does. In fact, there is no such thing as "waste" per se, only input and output. Your poop is for some species food, for others a home, and for others a womb.
This is a crucial part of the cycle of life. Once organisms adapt into symbiosis, they eat and grow together without harming each other. The beneficial bacteria in your gut secrete enzymes that digest your food, as well as organic chemicals that allow your immune system to function healthily. Such a relationship can take a long time to form. Symbiosis is a primary goal of biological evolution. There is nothing bad or shameful or evil or naughty or worthless about what you urinate or defecate. In fact, it is exactly the opposite.
What makes me laugh is this quote by someone who derides Intelligent Design: design by Mother Nature
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I know most people aren't interested, but let's have the URL for the original paper:
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/06/14/rspb.2010.0863.short?rss=1
This one is available free (i.e. you don't need a subscription to read it).
this of course would be the more general type of Footprint that indicates the area that an entity consumes on whatever surface is under discussion.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
I'm afraid to look at the picture. Is it of the whale or samzenpus and his can of chili at the beach?
By educating people:
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/globalwarming.html
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/climategate.php
Make sure to read each one all the way through then form your opinion.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
.. or we could follow the whale's lead and dump all our shit in the Challenger Deep and/or elsewhere deep. I wonder how long it would take us to fill it? ;)
I have to say, it sounds painful; they need to eat more fibre.
Animals don't have carbon footprints because they don't use stored carbon (Oil, Gas and Coal). This is the kind of dumbed down article I'd expect to find on Digg, not Slashdot.
It would be impossible for carbon dioxide exhaled by animals to increase the atmospheric CO2 concentration because that carbon was taken out of the atmosphere by plants / algae first. It's a closed cycle. Fossil fuels are a problem because that carbon isn't part of that cycle anymore, so releasing it faster than it can be absorbed obviously leads to a net increase.
It could just be the bowl of petunias that follows them around.
Most shoes have rubber soles and treads. Rubber is a product of petroleum, which made up of hydrocarbons. Can you see where I'm going with this?
Really, you want to post this story on /. ok...what ever turns your crank...
>If only we humans could say the same for our poop, which really doesn't do much more than just sit there /. and keep our gas money for better things...like finding better editors.
The fact that we never really studied our own feces for recycling or usage, means we just don't care enough to try.
If someone were to study our poop, we would see a means of processing our dung to be used as car fuel, then
we would stop flinging our crap all over
Sometime ago, several different groups were going to release iron in the ocean and cause the same thing. Then it was decided that it would not work by those groups. So, now, when a whale does it, it works, but not when humans do it? Why?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.