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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.'"
Amerindian? That's the stupidiest fucking word I've heard in years.
Native Americans are so much more in tune with nature......
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Always the buzzkills. There is no solution other than to eat tofu and walk everywhere in your hemp sandals. Any other solutions to 'climate change' are heresy.
>> (whatever) has been detected off the west coast of Canada that violates UN regulations
Is it Canada waters? Then WTF does anyone care what the UN papershufflers think?
>> The entrepreneur, Russ George, hopes to cash in on the carbon credits
Why not? Start treating silly little "carbon credits" like valuable pieces of paper, and they will become money.
So what happens if this little adventure is actually successful. Obviously there will be some side effects, but what if none of them are negative and the fish flourish and the evil carbon is inprisioned? Will they still seek to crucify this guy? Further, what "teeth" does an international "resolution" have to take legal action against him? he didn't break any actual laws.
It seems like he is swimming in a big grey sea and knows it. And is willing as an entrepreneur to take the risks associated with that swim. Makes sense to me.
That's quite a leap from next to no evidence you are making.
Insofar as realistic-scale research on any geoengineering processes are never going to be allowed, maybe this kinds of illegal stuff is the only way to find out what works and what won't. As the writeup correctly said, we just don't know what kind of effect this will have on oceanic oxygen levels. And for another thing, we don't really know what effect this will have on the salmon either. One thing that I'm happy about: Now we're at least about to find out! Since somebody did this, I hope that a flock of oceanologists flock to the site and measure the shit out of it. Yeah, it's not an experiment we wanted or approve of, but we might as well make a bit of lemonade out of these lemons!
So spewing billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere is NOT against UN regulations? That, it seems to me, is the REAL geoengineering experiment. At least the fertilization team is going to learn something that might be useful.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
TFA says that it violates two UN rules/moratoria with mention of one that limits ocean fertilisation projects... and probably something about not doing this sort of thing for commercial gain.
Can anyone else shed some light as to what was actually violated? Especially with the business man (George) in charge of the project claiming that such moratoria are "myths" and don't apply.
If carbon credits werent involved, would the same people be in an uproar?
"His name was James Damore."
Hard sci fi figured it all out a long time ago. Read KSR's red mars with special focus on the guerrilla geo/aero/engineering project. Given a lot of thought its all pretty predictable.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I say sequester carbon in plankton. Then salmon can sequester the plankton. Then sequester that there salmon to my plate, forthwith!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
And North Americans are breathing Chinese smog.
I want to know who gpt paid off to import this foreign made smog when we have plenty of good old American Made Smog right here in Los Angeles!!!
I think we need a Congressional investigation! With blackjack! And hookers!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
See, carbon credits are sooooooooooooo great y'all!
This is the kind of problem that's created by adversarial politics, we almost always end up choosing a single bad guy to blame all the ills in the world on, but in the end, it's a systemic issue that creates these problems. We'll never find a metric that tells us what is right and wrong to do with regards to the environment, and any solution that seems to offer such a measurement is disingenuous at best.
> Amerindians
In Canada, they know where the fuck India is. The people you are referring to are called “First Nations” not Indians. Maybe you should look at a map also.
is the sound of people wanting to know what the outcome is, to know that we are not doing more harm than good, before we do something like this. Don't f*ck the world by accident or by ignorance. Preferably don't f*ck it at all. I do not mind experimenting and learning, but something on this scale that has such huge potential ramifications, all on someone's belief rather than proven science, backed with long term studies - Nahh, that I do not like. Too much of it already in the world we live in. Let's learn from humanity's mistakes, please!
The important thing is that we live in a world where "rogue geoengineer" is a profession. I assume he's got an icecave where dude hangs out with Julian Assange and the rest of the League of Gray-hat Supervillians.
If carbon credits werent involved, would the same people be in an uproar?
Well being from Ontario(Cdn), his comment about watermelons, is pretty much spot on. Especially in relation to the disastrous "green" projects that the now ex-pm of the province has going. $24 billion and counting at the cost to tax payers.
Om, nomnomnom...
A global carbon certificate market crash. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You need more GMO.
They produce oxygen as long as they are alive and near the surface. They sink to the deep waters after they died, and even if they still lived they would have a hard time to produce oxygen down in the darkness of the deep sea.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Yup.
Mostly by stripping the Carbon from CO2 atoms. That's actually the entire point of doing it. Problem is it can screw up the local ecosystem in very unpredictable ways.
oxygen production. plankton are the foundation of the ocean ecosystem. i'm a lefty, but this seems like a win win. change will happen. but no more than when we make hydroelectric dams that drastically change the water temperature so all of the indigenous fish die and have to be replaced with colder water species. and these types of changes are justified every day. I really don't see a problem with this. let's do a study to see what happens when we offer fish more food. you get more fish.
Mark Anthony Collins
since everyone is already bashing liberals and government regulations, let's look at it from the other side.
what's the libertarian take on this, or, hypothetically, any project where the risks are in the $billions (ignoring effects on human life and welfare)? if things go wrong, then even if this guy goes into a private debtor's prison for life and somehow works at maximum capacity, there would be practically zero chance of him taking full responsibility for his harm. but the state shouldn't be able to stop him preemptively, so what's the deal? how will the open market take care of this (assuming for the moment that he has property licensed the property rights he needs to execute this project).
i guess he could take an insurance policy in theory, but even if an insurer were willing to cover this, the premium if correctly computed would probably be more than he could afford, so he would just go ahead and do it anyway.
what would happen in the real world is, of course, that private interests would have this guy arrested and maybe worse. but that's initiation of force (and libertarians would have to admit that private prisons would still exist in their paradise), so how do you solve the problem without initiating force?
you could say that the entrepreneur is "initiating force" by doing something very risky, but that's a definition which would admit many of the government regulations we have today.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
The UN has made its decision; now let it enforce it.
Seriously: there is nothing the UN can do about actions undertaken by private parties. They don't have any police force, much less an army. Now, if the actions violated Canadian law, that might be something that Mr. George actually has to worry about. But violating a resolution of the UN has no more effect than violating a resolution of your local university faculty senate. They are a talking shop, nothing more.
Every year we take 100 million tons of biomass from the oceans (mostly as pelagic fish, 70m tons). And each year, we dump 6 million tons of garbage in the oceans, 2 million tons of waste oil, and discharge about 450 cubic kilometres of waste water into rivers (about 450 billion tons, so even ppb chemicals release more than 100 tons).
But lets worry about 100 tons of iron sulphate dust.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Don't you worry, the planet will survive just fine; it's the humans that won't.
How do you earn carbon credits by dumping iron sulphate in the ocean?.
I find it hard to believe you'd get the by doing something against the rules.
Can I claim carbon credits by killing someone? It means they'll produce less carbon dioxide.
The UN is not (yet) a world government. There is a voluntary moratorium on geoengineering among the small number of governments that could afford to attempt such a thing, but that hardly qualifies as "UN regulations". In any case, small-scale experiments such as this, no matter how ill-conceived, are not going to have any global impact and so do not qualify as geoengineering.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
What a bunch of cry-babies. They cry about global warming and then when someone tries to do something about it, they cry about that. Either fish or cut bait. Whining is the wrong option.
Dear UN:
Go fuck yourself until you come up with your own plan. Difficulty - No "strongly worded letter"s.
No. Nukes cause too much collateral damage.
Here's a much better idea.
Take HIV. (Yes, that virus.) Attach to the rna strand an rna encoded copy of the gene for botuloid toxin, and a regulator gene to control expression. (Say, something that only permits activation during certain cyclical conditons, like say, menstration, or some other chemical trigger, so that it stays methylated and inactive in the host until that time.) Use the kind that is immune to the delta-CCR32 mutation, for maximum carnage.
Release into the wild.
Enjoy lots of dead people, as their own bodies begin cranking out the toxins that kill them. Quickly. Horribly.
Want to not catch it? Stay away from blood, needles, and sexual contact with anyone.
Tada. Doesn't effect a wide range of species, is fairly human specific, has a set interval of activation enabling incubation in the host to promote spread...
Its the population control that keeps on working.
(Note. I do not actually advocate this position. I am merely pointing out that it would be fairly easy to do, and that the reslts would be profound and would target rich and poor alike. Humans would have to adapt to not having unprotected sex, should it reach true pandemic proportions. Being politically, racially, and demographically agnostic, it is the perfect vehicle.)
If carbon credits werent involved, would the same people be in an uproar?
Does it really matter? I thought carbon credits were supposed to encourage this type of, er, entrepreneurship.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Has science fiction taught us nothing?!
I seem to be hearing the sound of UN flunkies screaming that this wasn't the way it was supposed to work? "AIIIIEEEEE!!! You can't just MANUFACTURE carbon credits!! That defeats the whole purpose of redistributing North American wealth!! Oh, wait, I wasn't supposed to tell anyone that. My bad."
wow did you read a biology book to learn this? or was it an entire degree?
We use virus carriers to inject genetic payloads into plant and animal species as a routine practice. Monsanto especially is very well equipped to make such a ...."product"...
The technology is sufficiently advanced and widely enough deployed that the proposal is quite doable.
The issue, is that it is inconsionably unethical. You would have to be freaking Trevor Goodchild to make and release something like this.
That.... is horrible and awesome.
Horbawesome? Awsorrible?
You have given that enough thought to be slightly disturbing.
uh yes. we have had the ability to do something this evil for two decades.
how? plankton are fish and whale food. this was a fantastic experiment and I'm glad it was done. the scale of it is tiny (60 x 60 mile)
Just imagine the 'lulz' that could be unleashed on the world, should the creators of malicious computer code, decide to dabble in wetware systems and genetic code.
We release the documentation publicly already you know. Incuding decompiled source, such as it is.
All that is needed, is that the technology becomes ubiquitous, and cheap.
Eventually, someone *will* make something like it. Someone with nothing to lose.
Sorry to be such a joykill, but I don't deny being a misanthropist. I am just not a cold blooded murderous misanthropist. I see the creation of such a horrible thing as being as inevitable as botnets and government malware were.
And in the end, the Greens realized that it was their own efforts to prevent environmental degradation that spurred it.
Foreign species brought in to repair the damage to local environments became invasive. Carbon markets, to tax and control pollution in the atmosphere, were soon gamed by every lawyer who had a creative mind. Even their attempts to depopulate or cull humanity only resulted in a population explosion, as stress + humans = sex.
I am John Hurt.
Tiny Experiment in Reducing Carbon Dioxide Pollution is Success
By putting a nutrient for plankton in the the ocean, a 60x60 plankton bloom will provide food for a Native American tribes salmon stocks. Moreover, the solution might work on a large scale to reduce the Earth's manmade carbon emissions. The inital venture was an amazing success, and any possible harm from implementing this long ago proposed geoengineernig activity can for the first time examined with real data.
Why would an "Amerindians" give a flying F about UN Regulations? Did the UN sign a treaty with their tribe?
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Talk about this and generally about China's lack of involvement in CO2 emission standards--and the US using such as an excuse not to act--makes me realize something rather non-profound but possibly relevant. It would seem clear to me that the US has a rather serious management problem. You see, China is a lot like Google and the US is a lot like Microsoft.
By that I mean, China is a developing country which is still working out just what sort of economic form it will have in the future. As a result, it is not only experience a lot of growth as it learns what it does well but it also wastes a lot of resources on a lot of projects that end up as dead-ends.
Meanwhile, the US is a developed country with a rather stable--overall--economic form. Growth ends up being rather incremental and spurts are usually rather limited in scope to the few success stories where the "US ingenuity"--ie, the perceived actions of a startup company/country--sees a wasteful project that actually goes somewhere. In the end, though, a lot of the economic form is controlled through a network of treaties and implied if not outright acted acts of force against not only enemies but also allies. The focus is, of course, to solidify power but it comes at the cost of exerting a lot more resources per capita as so many resources go towards just maintaining the power base.
Now, the real problem in all this is way too many Republicans and Democrats think the US is still a startup. They function just like a manager or a CEO who wants to do slash and burn policies--like cutting wages, benefits, etc to be more competitive against other countries--because they see those very things that make the US a developed country as also the main impediment to growth. The truth is, of course, that those sorts of actions --just like massive loans/stimulus packages--do have a short term benefit but obvious long-term harm. And if next quarter thinking and CEO golden parachutes make one's blood boil, then the very nature of the electoral process and the absurd compensation package offered to federal politicians would seem to be the very framework of which corporate executives must have cribbed their playbook.
So, yea, way off-topic to the point at hand. But, then, given the UN is all about trying to provide a forum for countries to talk to avoid war, I really don't see how the geoengineering project really falls under their purview any more than the CO2 issue, especially given how little teeth the UN has to enforce anything and certain how unwilling any country, even those who have made pledges, are inclined to explicitly force their citizens to comply.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Want to not catch it? Stay away from blood, needles, and sexual contact with anyone.
Extra Points For: And The Geeks Shall Inherit The Earth.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
It is the plot of a few different novels I've read over the last couple of decades. Some of them go fairly in depth.
It should work especially well on those groups that like to promote "ethnic purity" and have genetic tests to prove they're "pure". Find the genes they're claiming as unique, bind to just those.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
.. for one generation.
There are no other nations involved here, so there's no reason not to use the name they call themselves.
But, I want to get points for being politically correct and still be too lazy to learn the names of the people I pretend to care about!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You overstate a basically correct case. Some carbon credits actually do work to generate offset. Some do, but not as much as they claim. Many are, indeed, pure scam.
There is no way to properly regulate carbon credits, and the people who designed the system knew it, and intended ti. A carbon tax was the correct approach. It is reasonably enforceable with only a small bureaucracy needed. But it didn't provide as many opportunities for hidden (and obscured) corruption. Guess which passed.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Well, there's this generally lethal variant of the flu that can be transmitted through the air (no contact required). It already exists, and has been proven lethal among ferrets (which were chosen because their reaction to the flu is generally the same as that of humans).
If there's a vaccine against it, I haven't heard of it. It's reportedly 100% lethal, but I don't believe that. I think they just tried it on too small a group. So say it's only 99% lethal.
And it already exists! This is the one that researchers wanted to publish the genetic code of in a paper, but got talked out of. So no need for exotic inventions.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Small potatoes. Just cross a few cold viruses with the Ebola Zaire glycoprotein. It's already been done. Release, enjoy apocalypse (until you die drowning in your own blood).
Impossible.
Yes, those poor ignorant savages, always getting taken advantage of by the bad whites. Only the good whites can guide the poor ignorant savages on the path to enlightenment.
Infuriate left and right
You might like SCI-FI book about this sort of thing: Deus Machine by Pierre Oulette". The premise is, "Super fast AI + BIO engineering... What can possibly go wrong!?"
One cool thing I like is that it was written before the human genome was mapped... And also just around the time the Internet began to take off (1993), so it's a bit dated, but fun to see how folks imagined our current state of things, and where we might go in the near future.
mod parent up.
In France we have one such dead zone, consecutive to huge pork sewage dropped at sea. ;-)
Enormous algae blooms result in beaches covered with thick rot algae (instead of sand), which sucks so much oxygen out of the air (or produces so much other gases, I don't remember exactly) that this kills animals passing by the beaches (wild boars, horses recently). Mind you, how this helps tourism there
Needless to say bathing is forbiden.
Local politicians respect the numerous pork farmers, so nothing at all was done until the recent animal deathes made headlines. But I'm not sure anything will result, since that's all the local economy that should evolve.
At least in the OP the locals haven't evolved too much dependency yet.
Herve S.
Are probably not members of the UN so I cannot see how they can be constrained by it's treaties.
What is the tangible difference from pouring huge amongst of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere?
HIV sucks if you want carnage. Making it more fatal would only create a subtype that would die out or lose the mutation that makes it fatal Why not something that spreads better so it can kill a huge swath of ppl before it peters out? If the effect is insufficient, you can always modify whatever strain of cold is going around that week for another mass cull. If you can do it to HIV, wouldn't the common cold be a better choice? ( sorry I don't know if what you said above could be applied to the common cold ).
If you want a White Plague kind of killer, activated by mensturation ( why - because women make babies and killing them is more effective for population control than killing men - it may be one reason for some of the nasty stuff done to women (and especially children) by many cultures ( c.f. lectures by UC Davis's Gregory Clark on YouTube ) your HIV would only spread for on average half a month in carriers. Though men being immune seems attractive at first so they can be carriers, women would become far less promiscuous negating the disease-spreading advantage - this sort of enforced behavior modification of women seems like something a woman hating religious nut would pull.
But I can't think of a population control advantage of being sex selective for an std. Better to just killemall. Maybe if men could be made permanent carriers for an airborne germ, ( something TB-ish and incurable - does that exist other than TB itself? ) Then you could insert a gene that kills on mensturation, and another that constantly produces bath salts. Then you'd have rampaging bands of horny male zombies to break into and infect/eat-brains-of any remaining cloisters of women.
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I wonder if there is a way to have a disease that looks like certain 'types' of people. Then you get it and become allergic to yourself if you are one of those types right? I wonder who the first to create ( as the gp? said 'malicious wetware' ) will be.
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See here: http://www.crazymonkeygames.com/Pandemic-2.html a game where you can create your own disease and see how it spreads.
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Using the cold, or the flu causes too much collateral damage. Both viruses can infect any warm blooded animal, (with varying levels of efficiency). This means you would not only kill humans, but also damage the biosphere permanently.,
HIV only infects humans and other primates. The specificity of the virus is what makes it attractive, and the behavioral modification it would induce in women (Avoid sex at all costs!) is directly in line with the population reduction objective.
Also, men are known to resort to homosexuality in female deprived environments. (EG, things like prison rape and pals) HIV spreads through any sexual contact, and so, targeting women does not remove the transmission vector between men. (Especially when you throw in edge cases like transsexuals, and non-sexual vectors like needle sticks, and transfusions.)
The low virulence of HIV is exactly why it is desirable. You want an endemic and lingering menace. Not a sudden explosion of carnage.
It is possible that some other human specific virus, like HPV, could make a good backup plan. Maybe put ricin genes from the castor bean plant in that one, and get deadly genital warts.
the effect for population control is that it greatly reduces the desirability of casual sex, and simultaneously reduces the number of women. It puts strong natural selection on monogamy in males, and reduces the number of breeding females. The combined psychological and physical effects create an environment where having sex is seen as terrifying, and where asking a woman to have a good time that you dont know is considered potentially life threatening, and therefore inconsionible,
That it would be right up a religious nutter's alley is why I think it more probable than some other mechanisms.
That's quite a leap from next to no evidence you are making.
[cue levar burton Voice]"But you don't have to take my word for it." Let's ask Dr. Otto Edenhofer of the IPCC, "One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole."
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
"History is full of examples of ecological manipulations that backfired.'"
Uh... can you name a few thousand? How about ten?
You answered your own question.
Lots more fish and whale food means lots more fish and whales, as long as the experiment lasts that's not a problem. But when it ends the new fish and whales don't magically disappear, they hang around eating plankton until the plankton's gone, then they starve. If you're lucky everything gets back to where it should be after a few years of screwy population numbers, if you're not lucky the new fish/whales eat all the plankton and then starve, which means everything that eats them starves, and jellyfish rule the earth.
As for the scale, your math is right, but if someone with a PhD in this shit uses the phrase "this scares me," I tend to take that fairly seriously. And Dr. Maria Maldonado used exactly that phrase.
Its less than 32,000 litres of iron sulphate.
There are 1,386,000,000,000,000,000,000 litres of water in the ocean.
That's 0.0000000000000023%
Then again if it just made people sterile, and didn't kill them, they wouldn't be so careful about not getting it, so it might be more effective long term. But that seems totally incompatible with the B grade horror movie side objective I sorta had.. Meh..
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