Hungry Crustaceans Eat Climate Change Experiment 291
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.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Note that the whale blubber is eventually converted into CO2 as well.
Even if the whale dies and sinks to the ocean floor, only a small portion of the 'sequestered' carbon would not make it back into the atmosphere eventually (plenty of deep-sea animals consume whale carcasses, all the while converting the 'sequestered' carbon into CO2.
Maybe a tiny bit would be converted to Ca2CO3 by molluscs, but AFAIK, no shell-forming molluscs feed on deep-sea whale carcasses.
Re:Why is this a problem? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why Can't This Work... (Score:2, Informative)
...with algae? I'm not a biologist or ecologist, but doesn't the ocean food chain start with algae? And don't algae produce oxygen from CO2 instead of sequestering it like phytoplankton? Can't we fertilize parts of the ocean for plant growth instead?
Because of things like this, mostly: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Massive-Killer-Algae-Bloom-is-Making-Thousands-of-Victims-off-California-53468.shtml [softpedia.com]
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:5, Informative)
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.)
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:1, Informative)
We aren't planting 10 trees each per year for carbon storage because trees are not a long-term storage place. Yes, trees absorb carbon as they grow, but when they reach maturity they become carbon-neutral. When the tree dies it releases all that stored carbon as it decomposes. On a geological time scale trees store carbon for a VERY short time.
The problem we have now is the release of carbon that has been stored for the geological long-term. To really do something about that carbon entails storing it such that it won't be released any time in the next thousand years or more.
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:3, Informative)
Exactly. The CO2 is still locked up in an animal somewhere in the food chain, rather than the atmosphere. I guess they were looking for the perfect result of the CO2 just magically ceasing to be a problem. Most of those smaller lifeforms will end up as shit on the seabed anyway, what's the problem ?
As I understand the chemistry, the solar energy that is used to convert the CO2 to other forms (say, sugar, and similar things) is re-released by the animals when they expend energy and exhale what? CO2.
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:3, Informative)
However, is suspect that would only work in a shallow sea, and kill a lot of the life in that sea. Mostly, it would defeat the purpose of the seeding.
Yes, but not just because of the kill off of life. The reason algae blooms kill everything off is because they decay anerobically (sucking up O2 and releasing CO2). If you're deep enough, this isn't a big deal, but near the surface the CO2 will just get released again.
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:3, Informative)
Zebra mussels are filter feeders. And really excellent ones at that. The problem is they filter the water too well. This lets light reach greater water depths then it usually should. Which moves the plant biomass down to greater water depths. The issue comes up when there is nothing to eat/keep down the plant life that is growing like crazy.
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:5, Informative)
The carbon absorbed by the phytoplankton is used as energy source by successively larger animals in the food chain. To extract energy from it they burn it, releasing the resulting CO2 to the water. From there it eventually gets back in the atmosphere.
In other words, the whole process is CO2-neutral instead of being a CO2-sink as was hoped for.
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:3, Informative)
It turns out that they fall [columbia.edu]. It's fascinating. Really.
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:3, Informative)
These trees have a short life-expectancy and usually end up getting dumped in land-fills where they replenish the CO2 in the air.
Decay doesn't work like you think it does in a landfill. Sure I imagine some have the right environment to promote decay of plant material. Some landfills in desert regions have virtually no decay. Others have a strong reducing environment like swamps which are a known carbon sink. If the landfill environment doesn't promote decay of wood, then it becomes a carbon sink. You still have to worry about the release of methane, but this is some that can be managed (say by burning most of the methane that seeps out).
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:3, Informative)
Change is inevitable. We will have another ice age, we will have earthquakes and volcanoes, and continental drift continues irrevocably. Just take a look at the history of the planet and realise the magnitude of what the climate change lobby are trying to accomplish. Have a look at this [wikipedia.org] (scroll to the bottom) and notice the approximate lengths of the periods. The Cenozoic Era is approaching the length of the Jurassic or the Triassic periods, and you should know from geological history that sea levels and lifeforms differed widely during each of those periods. There were inundations and desertification happening regularly enough to form layers in what are now rocks. Is this all over and done with just because we are here ?
In my opinion, we should be expecting a change not fighting one. See this graph. [wikipedia.org] Does the present CO2 level look out of the ordinary with what has gone before, many times ? I argue that we should be preparing for a drop of around 8C global average not a rise of that amount. I predict (there I said it) that we will see massive sea level rises followed by a rapid cooling followed by another global rise in ice levels. There are many mechanisms to explain how this will happen. High temperatures and higher seal levels can increase cloud cover which can result in a higher planetary albedo, so causing drops in temperature, and rapid ice formation. The ice causes drops in sea level, which allows plants to get going again and CO2 rises starting the warming cycle off again.
Of course when I say "we will see" I don't mean us, I mean mankind. We (as in us) will probably see the start of the end of this cycle, so to speak. This is why I never trusted the hockey stick graph. If you look at that Vostock graph [wikipedia.org], you can see the exponential rise in CO2 levels started roughly 20,000 years ago. If you zoom in you can find multiple "hockey stick" type rises. Blame that on human machinery if you can. I believe this shows that there is a natural limit to how much CO2 the atmosphere can take and we were already pretty close to that limit before we burnt the first lump of coal. Trying to stop or reverse the process now is ludicrous. It (CO2) will go down naturally, and attempting to hold back natural planetary rhythms so that we don't get our feet wet is both short sighted and naive. We should be looking at how we are going to survive despite the changes not trying to prevent them from happening. We should be trying to understand what drives the approx. 120,000 year cycle of CO2 levels. For all we know it could be that galactic rotation brings us closer to larger x-ray/gamma ray sources or some other driver of astronomical change. We simply don't know enough, and chicken little squawking about something that is historically documented as inevitable is a waste of time and effort.
To finish up with a small quote from wikipedia [wikipedia.org]