"A California businessman chartered a fishing boat in July, loaded it
with 100 tons of iron dust and cruised through Pacific waters off
western Canada, spewing his cargo into the sea in an ecological
experiment that has outraged scientists and government officials...The
entrepreneur, Russ George, calling it a 'state-of-the-art study,' said
his team scattered iron dust several hundred miles west of the islands
of Haida Gwaii, in northern British Columbia, in exchange for $2.5
million from a native Canadian group. The iron spawned the growth of
enormous amounts of plankton, which Mr. George, a former fisheries and
forestry worker, said might allow the project to meet one of its goals:
aiding the recovery of the local salmon fishery for the native Haida.
Plankton absorbs carbon dioxide, the predominant greenhouse gas, and
settles deep in the ocean when it dies, sequestering carbon. The Haida
had hoped that by burying carbon, they could also sell so-called carbon
offset credits to companies and make money." [NYT]
Nod to Kevin Lewis
Nod to Kevin Lewis
3 comments:
My understanding is there are people out there trying to sue the financier of this carbon offset. Below is a quote from Deep Sea news.
http://deepseanews.com/2012/10/here-we-go-again-with-dumping-iron-into-the-ocean/
"In 2008 191 nations agreed to a moratorium on large-scale commercial iron fertilization schemes.
The agreement, adopted on 30 May at a meeting of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in Bonn, Germany, calls for a ban on major ocean fertilization projects until scientists better understand the potential risks and benefits of manipulating the oceanic food chain."
I wonder if we can get people to stop experimenting with carbon taxes and cap and trade until that is better understood.
He showed that what they really wanted wasn't lower amounts of carbon, but better tools and more excuses to control people.
Interesting read you shared here. By all means, carbon reduction is a must as this is indeed harmful to the environment.
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