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.
Well it sounds better than (Score:5, Insightful)
Still and all, that's why they do experiments. Sometimes you learn something.
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely. Sometimes you do learn something completely new. And that's great. But the true power of the experiment is in proving that some idea is wrong.
This experiment has proved that iron fertilization is not going to work as a carbon storage strategy. Personally, I think that more experiments like this will show that most if not all carbon storage strategies do not work. But that's just me talking. Again, you need a good, solid, experiment to show something either way. Rhetoric, statistics, or celebrity backing isn't going to prove anything. Only the experiment can be the final arbiter.
In recent years, I have seen field after field all but abandon the experiment as a scientific tool. Computer models, statistics and dubious mathematics became the tools of choice. It's nice to see one in the news again.
Nobody saw this coming? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's hard to believe nobody saw this coming. Hey, let's create a massive amount of food in the ocean and let it sink to the bottom. Did they think the ocean dwellers were just going to let it be for the sake of science or something?
I don't know, it sounds kinda stupid to me.
"Mom, I want to see how dog food reacts to the sun, so I'm going to fill Sparky's bowl and let it sit for a week."
Next day. "Mom, Sparky ate the dog food." Duh? :)
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:4, Insightful)
This experiment has proved that iron fertilization is not going to work as a carbon storage strategy.
No, it prooved that by this method it wont work.
Altering the method might fix it. How should they do that? I'd start by studying data from Lake Eerie in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. The desired effect happened then - a lot of photosynthetic biomass that wasn't getting eaten nearly as fast as it was made.
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.
Re:Not a failure (Score:1, Insightful)
Let them die of natural causes.
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:5, Insightful)
This experiment didn't prove that iron fertilization is never going to work as a carbon storage strategy. It showed that, in this situation, the plan didn't work as they thought it would; that hardly means that the strategy itself is unsound. Perhaps the iron seeding needs to be done in areas with lower predator populations. Perhaps they can add something with the iron the drives the predators away. Perhaps... they need to do more research before they say what is and isn't possible.
Just because it didn't work this time doesn't mean the idea should be abandoned, as the researchers themselves seem to indicate. Besides, saying that a single experiment proves anything is at least as unscientific as using models and statistics to do research.
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:5, Insightful)
"Personally, I think that more experiments like this will show that most if not all carbon storage strategies do not work."
So why aren't we, personally, planting 10 trees each year? Isn't that a carbon storage strategy, with free oxygen and built-in cooling?
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nobody saw this coming? (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, that's the whole point of experimenting. It's easy to say in hindsight that this was the result. But what if the result had gone the other way? Would you still be saying that it obviously would have worked?
Looks more complex to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Third, grazing is going to be a fundamental problem unless somehow plankton is seperated from the algae. I bet there is plankton that will eat diatoms too. The grazer problem will affect any program that attempts to carbon sink via ocean grown algae blooms.
Re:Infection (Score:3, Insightful)
The experiment was a success. It proved that their theory was invalid within the constraints and parameters that were defined.
Had the experiment failed to show a definitive determination as to the validity of the theory or if some external force altered the parameters beyond the theory's limits, then you could say that the experiment failed.
Just because the results of the experiment were not what you expected, does not mean that the experiment failed.
Think of it as the difference between searching for a theory that is back up by data, and searching for data that backs up your theory. One is scientific, the other is pharmaceutical.
-Rick
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't clear to me why this is a failure, or a negative result if you prefer. Granted, the carbon didn't sink to the bottom of the ocean, but it was still removed from the water, which should allow the water to absorb additional CO2 from the air. It seems to me that, so long as the CO2 is pulled from the atmosphere, it's still an effective means of combating warming. Isn't one of the proposed remedies to increase the plant mass? Why isn't this just as effective as increased plants? What am I missing?
Re:Nobody saw this coming? (Score:3, Insightful)
If they'd done it in a closed pool, they wouldn't have got the same result as they did.
The test was to see if this is a viable method of carbon capture. Due to the little sea creatures, turns out that it isn't viable. That's an important result that they're very glad they've found out now, so they can adjust their research accordingly.
Thus the experiment was a success.
Re:Why is this a problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:4, Insightful)
This experiment didn't prove that iron fertilization is never going to work as a carbon storage strategy. It showed that, in this situation, the plan didn't work as they thought it would; that hardly means that the strategy itself is unsound. ...
Now there you go being reasonable.
We want this experiment to fail. Therefore one small experiment in one small area proves it will never work anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances.
There you go, scientific proof.
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:5, Insightful)
I think since the dead plankton re-entered the food chain, the carbon that it sequestered will eventually be released through the respiration of the higher-level predators in a gaseous form that will again limit the ability of the ocean water to absorb carbon. The hope with sequestration was that the dead plankton would sink to the bottom, be covered quickly with sediment, and essentially become a permanent carbon deposit. It's like the difference between planting a tree, cutting it down, and burying it vs. cutting it down and burning it. I think the hope was by creating a huge, localized bloom, you would create more food than the food chain could absorb, but the food chain is proving more able to adapt to a sudden surge in food production than anticipated.
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:5, Insightful)
I dunno about less exciting. Since it boosts the food supply from the bottom of the chain, it might be quite a helpful way to repair the damage to sea populations due to serious mismanagement in the past. A temporary boost to the food chain might be exactly what is required.
This experiment was NOT a failure! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is like being against tree planting because it encourages bugs to come eat the leaves, birds to eat the bugs, and bacteria that eat the dead leaves
In ocean seeding theory, it would not be done in areas where there are many fish around to eat the plankton. The idea is to seed 'dead' areas of the tropic ocean where fish typically avoid because of its lack of iron. I believe in practice the idea is to seed very large areas of the ocean with less intensity than this experiment. I.E slowly release Fe off the back of shipping vessels for 100's of miles Regardless, i believe an externality of this is potentially treating some of the effects of overfishing.
Encouraging the ocean to absorb CO2 (NOT HYDROCARBONS!!) boosts its acidity. Unless someone has a reference on this, their suggestion is entirely wrong. The article they reference does not mention anything about this! Yes, CO2 increases in the ocean lead to carbonic acid and increase its acidity. But, fertilization TURNS THE CO2 into ORGANIC MATERIAL! Organic material DOES NOT INCREASE ACIDITY of the ocean, please read any book on photosynthesis.
I feel this article shows signs of some hard bias against ocean fertilization and I'm not sure why.
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:5, Insightful)
+1
But I'd say it's significantly more unscientific, because models and statistics do have their place in research.
Every time I hear someone say "study after study has proven what I'm telling you," I take it to mean "I read something in the paper the other day that gave a layman's (mis)interpretation of a cursory theoretical analysis of a process that has a tenuous relationship to the subject I'm talking about."
Re:Infection (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, that's what I try to tell my reviewers when some of my research ends up with a null result. "Even though this doesn't look like much, it's actually really important because...." :)
Actually, it is. Null results consistently going unpublished can lead to very wrong conclusions.
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude whales aren't internal combustion engines! Yes the whales etc exhale CO2, but they are also carbon based lifeforms so clearly something has been held onto.
If you increase the total biomass of the earth, CO2 has no option but to decrease, or else where is all that carbon coming from? Are animals and plants eating coal and oil now? The experiment may not have worked as planned but it has shown that you can boost the ocean biomass simply by seeding it with iron, thats damn interesting if you ask me. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees, this is a good example of one of my big complaints about climate change obsession: There are still other environmental issues out there, and we just discovered something very interesting relating to one of them.
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:4, Insightful)
Nature intends nothing.
Nature either works in a way that allows humans to survive, or it works in a way that does not. The research into how to ensure the former may be inspired by intuition, but it cannot be replaced by it - and assigning any kind of "intent" to nature is a potentially dangerous error.
Re:Well it sounds better than (Score:1, Insightful)
Did you know! that fish breath water. They breath for the oxygen, and exhale CO2. Every animal consumes food and oxygen, and exhales CO2. The amount of CO2 is equal to burning the food.
Now, not all the CO2 is released, because you still have some of it locked up in the predator that did the consuming.
Now, since the amount of CO2 released is equal to the amount of energy expended, and we can estimate about %90 energy used at each round of transformation: linky [bookrags.com] (ie phytoplankton to copepods, etc), we can also estimate a %90 release of CO2 at each stage. So, by the time you have reached the whale and squid part of the food chain, %99.9 of the CO2 has been re-released. (%90 after the copepods' feeding, %99 after the amphipods' feeding, then whales)
And if the whales get eaten? or if they die and decompose? you are up to %99.99 CO2 released.
You get the idea. So, unless the organic matter is locked away somehow (in this case, the hope was the dead plankton would get buried at the ocean's bottom) it just continues...