My Buoyant Flakes method of ocean fertilization is now under investigation by a consortium of five research labs, including two from the global South. Details are available at https://www.noac.info/ReferencesDetail.aspx . Using largely waste materials on a substrate of rice husks it should be able to provide the key FePSi nutrients to all deficient surface waters. Of the many potential benefits, perhaps the best is that it should increase ocean albedo enough to offset current global warming. We now need industry to make and disseminate the flakes in gated, transparent experiments to ensure the bests results in different regions.
I have one additional thought to this. We do not necessarily need to aim for long-term persistence of carbon dioxide capture (e.g. sediments +1000 yrs) when using OIF. Much of the carbon dioxide captured by OIF is bound to increased biomass in food chains (fish, dolphins, whales, birds, etc.) with lifespans of a few years up to a hundred years. In addition, there are long-term cycles in the different layers of the ocean that keep some of the captured carbon bound for tens or even hundreds of years. Thus, the binding of carbon to these chains and cycles enabled by OIF, and the increase in the total amount of biomass, gives us tens or even hundreds of years of additional time to change our way of living and implement permanent emission reduction measures that seemingly require more time to develop and implement. OIF can therefore also be thought of as a so-called temporary transitional solution. In my opinion, this line of thought could increase the public acceptability of OIF.
Hi Peter, so OIF would be temporary strategy over decades to capture carbon as long as we don't reduce global emissions? Doesn't that leave the main problem of our overshoot untouched e.g. we keep using more fossil energy, we keep extracting more natural resources to turn them into waste & pollution?
Finally how does the OIF still work when the phytoplankton population is collapsing because of general sea pollution e.g. the SML layer that has been researched by Howard Dryden?
My understanding is that OIF has been proposed and even tested a long time ago. Why has it not progressed more? Strong opposition by environmental groups seems to be one reason. What needs to be done to overcome their objections?
Thanks for addressing some issues that could arise and may need to be dealt with. Still this method of reducing CO2 to the scale needed is by far our most promising one. It just makes sense to begin projects that we can learn from and correct as we go along. We can stop if there are reasons to do so. We know we are in danger of hothouse earth and we need to consider this solution that will be to the scale of the problem and affordable.
Thank you for your support, Diane. Yes, you got it--when we weigh the uncertain and containable risks of OIF against the certain and very high risk of doing nothing... it's clear we need to act now.
HeIIo Peter I want to thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. I'm hopeful that other folks follow this and will grasp this critical bit of information.
Currently our oceans seem to be starved But why?, And not just for lack of iron, but for many trace minerals and elements essential for supporting the health of the all marine life and a key foundational piece for the marine food chain, Diatoms too. A severe decrease of Diatomic Phytoplankton and a reduction to this microscopic population, is cutting severely, the ability of this single cell creature to keep up its level of Co2 sequestration, turning Co2 into oxygen. As a matter of fact phytoplankton is variety of diatoms, merely one of thousands of species of diatoms.
Another lense to view our planet and why the oceans ,at least ther Northern Hemisphere Oceans are experiencing the greatest decrease in available marine food. Something of great importance to help the planet and its climate is being ignored.
Prior to the mid 20th century many of the larger rivers had been functioning normally. Rivers have always been the main nutritional delivery system for the smallest microscopic living things in the oceans: diatoms (plankton), which feed the largest of marine mammals the Blue Whale.
The estuaries,bays, and Continental Shelf flood each spring and during stormy periods, feeding the earth with rich nutritional sediments from erosion. Through the late 1950s into the 1980s many of the major rivers and waterways that emptied into the Northern Hemisphere oceans had large dams constructed that obstructed the natural flows containing much of the nutritional requirements of marine life.
Dams and flow regulation on rivers weaken the force of these upwelling ocean currents so fewer nutrients are available. The marine food chain is very dependent on diatoms, and their populations are declining rapidly; the world’s ocean fisheries are also in decline.
Many other species, also important for carbon sequestration, are starving because of the nutrients withheld by river impoundments. NASA has indicated diatom populations are diminishing by about one percent per year. This equates to a significant increase in CO2 levels, because CO2 removal by diatoms is not occurring at the same rate before dams.
River obstruction and impoundments cut off much of the nutrient flow to all marine life, stockpiling it behind dams, decomposing (emitting methane) and accelerating global warming. Clearly out of the historical normal range, the planet’s coronary arteries are now severely compromised.
Like cardiovascular disease in humans, deprivation of this ‘blood supply’ results in the starvation of aquatic life and with it the decline of livable terrestrial habitat.
Unfortunately the earth does not have a primary care physician who would recommend surgery to remove these blockages, freeing up the blood supply allowing the patient to recover.
It is up to us, the tenants, to take the helm and choose not to invest in damming up its cardiovascular system. We need to live with, not on, the earth and allow it to recover from our antiquated energy generation practices, which are doing what may be irreparable harm.
Divest from mega-dams. Remove the blockages that are continuing to damage our climate by preventing nutritional flow, thawing the permafrost and destroying habitats for all living things, land and sea.
Let’s allow the Earth to heal itself by freeing up the natural flow of river waters.
Let the rivers run free again.
1. Maavara, T., Akbarzadeh, Z.,& Van Cappellen, P. (2020). Global dam‐driven changes to riverine N:P:Si ratios delivered to the coastal ocean. Geophysical Research Letters, 47, e2020GL088288.
Thank you, Cliff, for bringing in the question of dams and phytoplankton. There's also the decrease of whales, which upwell nutrients, and slowing of upwelling currents.... If we restore safe CO2 levels, we'll have time to make all sorts of things right! If we don't, we're rather cooked. Thanks again for your reply and your own informative substack.
I'm chock full of lots of good or bad information about the large proliferation of dams in the Arctic and subarctic region. A MAJOR IMPACT THAT continues to be ignored by most in the scientific community.
Our current water vapor emission studies taken at weather stations from labrador, where there's huge proliferation of sea-size reservoir hydro generating stations, and other weather stations on the Southern end of Greenland show that prevailing Southwesterly winds blow this saturated atmospheric water vapor from those dams in Labrador right up to Greenland. You should see what NASA has to say about the GHG of water vapor. If you are so inclined I can send you some of our studies and email you documents.
Good brief synopsis on the issue, and framing what is needed next. This is a very good article to give people for an initial orientation to to the issue.
My Buoyant Flakes method of ocean fertilization is now under investigation by a consortium of five research labs, including two from the global South. Details are available at https://www.noac.info/ReferencesDetail.aspx . Using largely waste materials on a substrate of rice husks it should be able to provide the key FePSi nutrients to all deficient surface waters. Of the many potential benefits, perhaps the best is that it should increase ocean albedo enough to offset current global warming. We now need industry to make and disseminate the flakes in gated, transparent experiments to ensure the bests results in different regions.
Hi Peter. Great article!
I have one additional thought to this. We do not necessarily need to aim for long-term persistence of carbon dioxide capture (e.g. sediments +1000 yrs) when using OIF. Much of the carbon dioxide captured by OIF is bound to increased biomass in food chains (fish, dolphins, whales, birds, etc.) with lifespans of a few years up to a hundred years. In addition, there are long-term cycles in the different layers of the ocean that keep some of the captured carbon bound for tens or even hundreds of years. Thus, the binding of carbon to these chains and cycles enabled by OIF, and the increase in the total amount of biomass, gives us tens or even hundreds of years of additional time to change our way of living and implement permanent emission reduction measures that seemingly require more time to develop and implement. OIF can therefore also be thought of as a so-called temporary transitional solution. In my opinion, this line of thought could increase the public acceptability of OIF.
Hi Peter, so OIF would be temporary strategy over decades to capture carbon as long as we don't reduce global emissions? Doesn't that leave the main problem of our overshoot untouched e.g. we keep using more fossil energy, we keep extracting more natural resources to turn them into waste & pollution?
Finally how does the OIF still work when the phytoplankton population is collapsing because of general sea pollution e.g. the SML layer that has been researched by Howard Dryden?
My understanding is that OIF has been proposed and even tested a long time ago. Why has it not progressed more? Strong opposition by environmental groups seems to be one reason. What needs to be done to overcome their objections?
Thanks for addressing some issues that could arise and may need to be dealt with. Still this method of reducing CO2 to the scale needed is by far our most promising one. It just makes sense to begin projects that we can learn from and correct as we go along. We can stop if there are reasons to do so. We know we are in danger of hothouse earth and we need to consider this solution that will be to the scale of the problem and affordable.
Thank you for your support, Diane. Yes, you got it--when we weigh the uncertain and containable risks of OIF against the certain and very high risk of doing nothing... it's clear we need to act now.
Great Article Peter. Thank You
Glad it resonated with you. Thanks for your comment.
HeIIo Peter I want to thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. I'm hopeful that other folks follow this and will grasp this critical bit of information.
Currently our oceans seem to be starved But why?, And not just for lack of iron, but for many trace minerals and elements essential for supporting the health of the all marine life and a key foundational piece for the marine food chain, Diatoms too. A severe decrease of Diatomic Phytoplankton and a reduction to this microscopic population, is cutting severely, the ability of this single cell creature to keep up its level of Co2 sequestration, turning Co2 into oxygen. As a matter of fact phytoplankton is variety of diatoms, merely one of thousands of species of diatoms.
Another lense to view our planet and why the oceans ,at least ther Northern Hemisphere Oceans are experiencing the greatest decrease in available marine food. Something of great importance to help the planet and its climate is being ignored.
Prior to the mid 20th century many of the larger rivers had been functioning normally. Rivers have always been the main nutritional delivery system for the smallest microscopic living things in the oceans: diatoms (plankton), which feed the largest of marine mammals the Blue Whale.
The estuaries,bays, and Continental Shelf flood each spring and during stormy periods, feeding the earth with rich nutritional sediments from erosion. Through the late 1950s into the 1980s many of the major rivers and waterways that emptied into the Northern Hemisphere oceans had large dams constructed that obstructed the natural flows containing much of the nutritional requirements of marine life.
Dams and flow regulation on rivers weaken the force of these upwelling ocean currents so fewer nutrients are available. The marine food chain is very dependent on diatoms, and their populations are declining rapidly; the world’s ocean fisheries are also in decline.
Many other species, also important for carbon sequestration, are starving because of the nutrients withheld by river impoundments. NASA has indicated diatom populations are diminishing by about one percent per year. This equates to a significant increase in CO2 levels, because CO2 removal by diatoms is not occurring at the same rate before dams.
River obstruction and impoundments cut off much of the nutrient flow to all marine life, stockpiling it behind dams, decomposing (emitting methane) and accelerating global warming. Clearly out of the historical normal range, the planet’s coronary arteries are now severely compromised.
Like cardiovascular disease in humans, deprivation of this ‘blood supply’ results in the starvation of aquatic life and with it the decline of livable terrestrial habitat.
Unfortunately the earth does not have a primary care physician who would recommend surgery to remove these blockages, freeing up the blood supply allowing the patient to recover.
It is up to us, the tenants, to take the helm and choose not to invest in damming up its cardiovascular system. We need to live with, not on, the earth and allow it to recover from our antiquated energy generation practices, which are doing what may be irreparable harm.
Divest from mega-dams. Remove the blockages that are continuing to damage our climate by preventing nutritional flow, thawing the permafrost and destroying habitats for all living things, land and sea.
Let’s allow the Earth to heal itself by freeing up the natural flow of river waters.
Let the rivers run free again.
1. Maavara, T., Akbarzadeh, Z.,& Van Cappellen, P. (2020). Global dam‐driven changes to riverine N:P:Si ratios delivered to the coastal ocean. Geophysical Research Letters, 47, e2020GL088288.
Thank you, Cliff, for bringing in the question of dams and phytoplankton. There's also the decrease of whales, which upwell nutrients, and slowing of upwelling currents.... If we restore safe CO2 levels, we'll have time to make all sorts of things right! If we don't, we're rather cooked. Thanks again for your reply and your own informative substack.
I'm chock full of lots of good or bad information about the large proliferation of dams in the Arctic and subarctic region. A MAJOR IMPACT THAT continues to be ignored by most in the scientific community.
Our current water vapor emission studies taken at weather stations from labrador, where there's huge proliferation of sea-size reservoir hydro generating stations, and other weather stations on the Southern end of Greenland show that prevailing Southwesterly winds blow this saturated atmospheric water vapor from those dams in Labrador right up to Greenland. You should see what NASA has to say about the GHG of water vapor. If you are so inclined I can send you some of our studies and email you documents.
Can I interest you in a webinar coming up March 12 . My research group
New England Canadian Provinces Allliance hydrodamtruth.org I will be leading this segment: Damming Rivers, Melting Sea Ice, And Warming Oceans
DETAILLS AND REGISTERING: https://act.sierraclub.org/events/details?formcampaignid=701Po00000hHWp7IAG&mapLinkHref=
Good brief synopsis on the issue, and framing what is needed next. This is a very good article to give people for an initial orientation to to the issue.
Thanks, Mark! Please share abundantly!
Thank you Peter for this amazing article.
Paul Chestnut
Thanks for your support, Paul. We're approaching the topic from various angles; this seems to have struck a chord. Please pass it around!