Huge Geoengineering Project Violates UN Rules

Baldrson writes "The Guardian reports that a massive geoengineering project has been detected off the west coast of Canada that violates UN regulations. An Amerindian tribe in the Pacific NW that depends on salmon teamed with an entrepreneur and a group of scientists to have 100 tons of iron sulphate spread across a huge area of the ocean in order to spur plankton growth. 'Satellite images appear to confirm the claim ... that the iron has spawned an artificial plankton bloom as large as 10,000 square kilometers. The intention is for the plankton to absorb carbon dioxide and then sink to the ocean bed – a geoengineering technique known as ocean fertilization that he hopes will net lucrative carbon credits.' The entrepreneur, Russ George, hopes to cash in on the carbon credits and the Amerindian tribe on an increased salmon harvest. The situation has sparked outcry from environmentalists and civil society groups. Oceanographer John Cullen said, 'It is difficult if not impossible to detect and describe important effects that we know might occur months or years later. Some possible effects, such as deep-water oxygen depletion and alteration of distant food webs, should rule out ocean manipulation. History is full of examples of ecological manipulations that backfired.'"

Comments

Re:Soooo coool!

[girlintraining]

Native Americans are so much more in tune with nature......

I think it's more a bit of history repeating -- Native Americans meet people who see only dollar signs, agree to let them use their property (hey, what's the worst that could happen?), and after the commercial break, we'll be onto the ecological disaster and a lot of dead natives portion of the story. If this guy's fringe tech fails, it could very well starve them to death.

Re:Environmentalists

[NeutronCowboy]

No, you goddamn moron - the buzzkills are the people who think that engineering changes on a global scale without a fucking clue of the long-term ramifications is a huge, terrible and deadly idea. Heck, even simple projects like damming a river is creating all kinds of unforeseen problems if the damming is large enough: earthquakes, for one, weren't on the list when people drew up drawbacks for those.

Let me guess - you are the fucking idiot who thinks that applying changes directly to production is a brilliant way to speed up the roll-out of new features, don't you?

Oh, and since you're probably one of those people who think that property rights are everything, and the defense of your own way of life trumps everything: mind if I stop by and shoot you in the face because you support fucking up my life through planetary engineering? No? O course not - those solution are only valid if YOUR life is inconvenienced.

Go die in a fire.