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R.Wreck
SFN Regular
USA
1191 Posts |
 Posted - 05/26/2007 : 10:19:14
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I saw a brief article on Planktos in an electric industry trade magazine. It sounded interesting, so I thought I would check it out.
Planktos, Inc. is a for-profit ecorestoration company based in San Francisco with offices in the European Union and British Columbia. Our primary focus is to restore damaged habitats in the ocean and on land. Through iron-stimulated plankton blooms in the oceans and afforestation projects in Europe, we are able to generate carbon credits. We then sell these offsets to individuals and businesses that are looking to reduce their carbon footprint and lower their impact on climate change. The profits from the sale of these carbon credits finance further ecosystem restoration projects.
Plankton and trees both capture CO2 through photosynthesis and store the carbon in their tissues. This sequestration of carbon helps reduce global warming, one of the greatest crises facing humanity and Mother Nature today.
At Sea
At sea, Planktos uses a process called iron replenishment to restore declining plankton growth in the open seas. We revive plankton populations by adding iron dust to the ocean. Iron is a critical micronutrient needed by plankton for photosynthesis. It normally reaches the oceans in wind-borne iron-rich dust from arid lands, but that dust supply has fallen 30% over the past 30 years, resulting in a 10% decline in plankton populations since the late 1970s. Extensive research projects have shown that adding tiny amounts of iron can powerfully regenerate plankton growth. Stimulating plankton blooms not only captures global warming CO2, but also restores ocean ecosystems, as plankton is the base of the food chain.
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I looked around their site, but didn't find any actual numbers showing how much of an effect this effort might have in reducing atmospheric CO2. Since I'm not a marine (or any other kind of) biologist, I don't know how much additional plankton you would need to make a noticable dent in the problem. And I wonder if a resultant increase in sea creature population would eat enough of the plankton to neutralize the effort from a carbon sequestration point of view (although if it helps to re-populate the oceans that we sometimes seems to be doing our damndest to kill, it might be a good thing anyway).
Planktos is out to make a profit be selling carbon credits to offset carbon production (see here). I don't hold that against them, I just wonder if they can really deliver what they promise. Maybe someone here with more knowledge of marine ecosystems can enlighten me.
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The foundation of morality is to . . . give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibliities of knowledge.
T. H. Huxley
The Cattle Prod of Enlightened Compassion
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
 Posted - 05/26/2007 : 13:40:09 [Permalink]
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Plankton is the source of a lot of oxygen in our atmosphere.
But the surface area of the waters of the earth is huge, so even of you "renew" a few thousand square kilometers it will not do much to change the CO2 in the atmosphere. And when the plankton dies and gets recycled in the biosphere we still get CO2 released by the decomposition process. |
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 06/05/2007 : 09:29:54 [Permalink]
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This seems like a good candidate for the law of unintended consequences.
Still, its an interesting idea.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Planktos - Sequestering Carbon With Plankton
