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Please solve for the equilibrium
That’s what some environmentalists said they feared when Planktos, a California-based concern, announced it would embark on a private effort to fertilize part of the South Atlantic with iron, in hopes of producing carbon-absorbing plankton blooms that the company could market as carbon offsets. Countries bound by the London Convention, an international treaty governing dumping at sea, issued a “statement of concern” about the work and a United Nations group called for a moratorium, but it is not clear what would have happened had Planktos not abandoned the effort for lack of money.
Here is the whole story.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 12, 2008 at 04:04 AM in Science | Permalink
Comments
Go the board and write "unintended consequences" 100 times.
Posted by: John B. Chilton at Aug 12, 2008 10:45:47 AM
Of course, the other side of the coin is paralysis in the face of slow destruction of the environment. We don't know what will happen if we try something of this scale, so we don't do anything. (and anything we try will be of this scale)
So, basically, anything other than reducing carbon emissions will always be overruled.
Posted by: Gary at Aug 12, 2008 12:52:08 PM
Of course, this shows in part the emotional and Puritanical aspect of Al Gore-style environmentalism. If their goal were truly to reduce atmospheric CO2 at all costs, this experiment should have had their full approval. But for many, environmentalism is a secular religion, requiring self-sacrifice (and imposing that self-sacrifice on others) rather than creative scientific solutions.
Posted by: anonymous_coward at Aug 12, 2008 1:51:32 PM
Of course, this shows in part the emotional and Puritanical aspect of Al Gore-style environmentalism. If their goal were truly to reduce atmospheric CO2 at all costs, this experiment should have had their full approval. But for many, environmentalism is a secular religion, requiring self-sacrifice (and imposing that self-sacrifice on others) rather than creative scientific solutions.
Posted by: anonymous_coward at Aug 12, 2008 1:51:52 PM
Uncertainty is clearly a big problem in evaluating the planet-altering effects of our actions. A bit of paralysis might not be a bad thing in the long-run. Reducing carbon emissions does seem to be the safest bet. We can't be sure any action is inherently safe so we have to adopt a process of adaptive management - cautious experimentation with possible options, careful monitoring and analysis, continual testing and adjusting of our assumptions and decisions based on the latest knowledge. And of course, the whole of society has to be involved because we are all stakeholders. That's quite a challenge, but we can't bury our head in the sand and ignore it.
Posted by: Bill at Aug 12, 2008 2:58:51 PM
Question for anonymous_coward - What motivates environmentalists to impose sacrifices on themselves and society?
Posted by: Bill at Aug 12, 2008 3:06:17 PM
We face unintended consequences either way.
Posted by: greenish at Aug 12, 2008 3:06:42 PM
Bill, they are motivated by the same interests that motivate any group of people with a problem: they want to gain control over their fellow citizens. They view some behavior as immoral, and a quick technical fix would remove the only leverage they have.
That said, what possible ill effects can come from dumping iron in the ocean? Iron is a natural element, so the ocean is used to it, and even if it did cause problems you can just stop dumping the iron, it will sink, and the algae will die.
And what about the risk of not dumping iron in the ocean? Reducing CO2 emissions may seem the safest course to you, but if attempting to do so overstresses society and causes a nuclear war, then clearly doing nothing would have been safer for the environment.
The problem is that this solution is cheap and does not require vesting technocrats with power over their fellow citizens.
Posted by: LoneSnark at Aug 12, 2008 4:27:39 PM
The iron-infusing approach is different from the aerosol or mirrors approach.
The latter approaches mitigate CO2 which is allowed to remain in the atmosphere, so they must be maintained indefinitely.
The iron-infusing approach causes an algal bloom, which consumes a certain amount of CO2 and then sinks to a depth at which it will not decay. Therefore, if we decide we don't like the side effects we can stop but the CO2 that has been removed is gone.
-dk
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