Canadian government 'knew of plans to dump iron into the Pacific'

[xchrom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/17/canada-geoengineering-pacific


An aerial of the Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, Canada. Photograph: Russ Heinl/Alamy

As controversy mounts over the Guardian's revelations that an American businessman conducted a massive ocean fertilisation test, dumping around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate off Canada's coast, it has emerged the Canadian government may have known about the geoengineering scheme and not stopped it.

The news combined, with Canadian obstructionism in negotiations over geoengineering at a United Nations biodiversity meeting in Hyderabad, India, has angered international civil society groups, who have announced they are singling out Canada for a recognition of shame at the summit – the Dodo award for actions that harm biodiversity.

They are criticising Canada for being one of "four horsemen of geoengineering", joining Britain, Australia and New Zealand in opposing southern countries' efforts to beef up the existing moratorium on technological fixes for global warming.

The chief executive of the company responsible for spawning the artificial 10,000 square kilometre plankton bloom in the Pacific Ocean has implicated several Canadian departments, but government officials are remaining silent about the nature of their involvement.

[pipoman]

1. So did it work or not?

I mean there is apparently a problem, someone apparently thought this would help, others disagree (as will always be the case). What do we do? Nothing?

[Kolesar]

2. I hope it worked.

If it was efficacious, we should use it on a grand scale. By now, we cannot solve the greenhouse gas problem with cuts in emissions or restoring forests.

[hunter]

3. Bombing fossil fuel power plants would work much better.

Maybe with cruise missiles. Give a couple days notice, then BOOM, another coal fired power plant is dead.

Another idea would be using solar and wind power to make methane and quicklime out of calcium carbonate. We could pump the methane back into old natural gas wells and dump the quicklime into the oceans where it will soak up excess carbon dioxide and precipitate out.



I just find some of these solutions to be bizarre. Adding iron to the ocean is crazy. The simple way to quit smoking is to quit smoking. The simple way to slow the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide is to quit burning fossil fuels.

[Nihil]

4. You and me both

> I just find some of these solutions to be bizarre.
> Adding iron to the ocean is crazy.
> The simple way to quit smoking is to quit smoking.
> The simple way to slow the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide is to quit burning fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, "simple" <> "profitable" and profit is king ... hence stupid & illegal projects like
this one intended not to "help the planet" but purely to boost their personal fortune from merely
"obscene" to "unbelievably obscene".