Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

Global warming does not have to occur for weather patterns to change. Look, I am not arguing here that weather patterns are entirely responsible for what is going on in the Arctic, however they are a part of the equation, an equation that includes alot more than what the overall average temperature of the earth might be doing.

Been following this thread since it was started... I'm about as well read as the average Australian with a intelligence that I would assume to be below average, going on the reading of this thread. However, I, like my friends and associates tend to agree, from the information we have acquired re global warming... it seems, if the panic mode of the enlightened one's is true, we are going to have huge amounts of water causing devastating flooding and at the same time all this water becoming heated and giving off moisture that will form huge amounts of cloud that will deflect the radiation from the sun that will cool the planet ?. Or.. have I and my friends got it wrong?.

anton bonnier, I think you mention a very important point, that is applicable to many more facets of climate than you mention. One school of thought tends to further the fear that a "tipping point" exists so that if the climate warms past a certain point, it sets into motion a chain of events that is totally catastrophic. I do not subscribe to that theory. I think nature is constructed in such a way that there are checks and balances, much like our bodies have, such that when something goes slightly out of whack, there are other factors that come into play to counteract those effects, which tend to bring everything back into balance again. I don't know about your example, but something like the effect you mention seems quite plausible to me.

Arctic sea ice at lowest recorded level ever... since satellites exist (ie not very long ago)

BTW, The Washington Post concurs with its article entitled: "Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt." In the article it mentions "great masses of ice have now been replaced by moraines of earth and stones," and ""at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared."
Oh, I forgot, it was in its edition of Nov 2, ... 1922

What is your point?

Cycloptichorn

I may be right... or not. In fact, nobody knows since models DON'T know if in a warmer world, there will be more or less cloud.
Besides, it seems strange that people can't imagine more rain (which is certain in a warmer world even if nobody knows how much more, see for example this huge discrepancy between model's and real life results) in another form than catastrophic flooding. Think of the Sahara which was wet and green 6000 years ago when the world was warmer than now and when decidious forests were found in the Northern parts of Europe now populated with conifers.

My point is that talking about Arctic icecap shrinking while "forgetting" to mention that Antarctica is gaining mass or that the Arctic was much warmer and that there was much more permafrost melting in the 1930s is misleading, to say the least.

antartica is gaining mass? how? Migrating penguins?

Dunno about the "gaining mass" bit, but the centre of Antarctica is certainly cooling:



(changes shown over the last 20+ years)

Oh yeah, the coastlines, particularly in the western hemisphere, seem to be warming. Should that be mentioned?

Re: Tech Scientist's Idea Could Offset Warming: more plankto


Thanks for the humor, BBB, and I made bold the key sentence in your post.

As a matter of note, if this guy does happen to be correct, how come this is not being charted and included in the global warming models? I assume it isn't? And if it is included, which I doubt, how come nobody is talking about it? How could something so simple and so brilliant escape the experts? And how come this guy is the first to come up with such an ingenius way to obtain funding for his job? Could sea plankton be the messiah?

Okie
Okie, would you believe it if FOX News published the story?---BBB

Re: Okie

Did I ever say I believed it or not? Again, you totally misunderstand my post.

To explain, my post indicates I found it humorous a scientist thinks sea plankton might cool the earth enough to save the earth from catastrophic consequences, sort of a messiah type thing. I never said I thought sea plankton do not possibly have any influence whatsoever, in fact sea plankton might have some influence, stranger things have happened, but I am going to approach it as a skeptic in terms of the magnitude of that influence until more concrete data is presented.

Secondly, I thought it was revealing that perhaps funding for his job may be fairly pertinent to what he is proposing and claiming. Just an observation, thats all.

Third, is there any evidence that sea plankton has been cranked into global computer climate models so far? If not, it may have several implications, one being that it simply demonstrates one of a myriad of factors that might influence climate that may be totally ignored by current science, which is not surprising.

You don't understand the points I bring up? And you don't see any humor?

How plankton change the climate
How plankton change the climate: Plankton affect our planet far more then their-size suggests. Their role in the carbon cycle pushed the world into ice ages and could control how fast our climate changes in the future

16 March 1991
From New Scientist Print Edition
by PHILLIP WILLIAMSON and JOHN GRIBBIN
From issue 1760 of New Scientist magazine, 16 March 1991, page 48

Plankton levels in Britain, 1991Plankton are some of the smallest living things on Earth, but they could influence the climate of the whole planet. They are the most abundant form of life in the oceans, in both weight and sheer numbers. A litre of seawater can contain many millions of bacteria, thousands of phytoplankton-microscopic plants-and hundreds of zooplankton-microscopic animals.

These tiny organisms influence our climate in several ways. They absorb and scatter light, warming the topmost layers of the ocean, and they produce volatile organic compounds, such as dimethyl sulphide, which help clouds form. But their most significant role is moving carbon around the oceans, on a scale large enough to affect levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is how plankton play a part in the natural greenhouse effect. No one is yet sure how they will respond to the warming prompted by extra greenhouse gases; they may help keep carbon dioxide within tolerable limits, or they could thwart our best efforts to control its emissions.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing at present, primarily because we are using fossil fuel, such as coal, oil and gas. This is likely to lead to global warming and related changes in the world's climate. But we could expect far worse changes if all the carbon dioxide produced by human activity stayed in the atmosphere: roughly half of the annual emissions disappear, some 2.5 gigatonnes out of emissions of between 6 and 7.5 gigatonnes of carbon. Until recently, scientists have assumed that the oceans provide the sink for most, if not all, of the 'missing' carbon dioxide. But they have not made accurate measurements of the amount absorbed, and no one really understands the processes involved.

This uncertainty is a cause for concern. The oceans store about 50 times more carbon than the air, and, each year, oceans and atmosphere exchange around 15 times as much carbon dioxide as human activities produce. If we want to predict how carbon dioxide will build up in future, and, in turn, understand changes in the climate, we need to understand how the ocean carbon cycle works. This is the aim of the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS), a 10-year programme that forms the main marine project in the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme, which investigates environmental change on a world scale.

JGOFS oceanographers, biologists and chemists first took to the seas-the North Atlantic-for field studies in 1989. Their aim was to find out more about how and why plankton grow, what then happens to the carbon that they fix in their tissue, and what effect these organisms have on the exchange of carbon dioxide between air and sea. One target was to find out exactly what happens in the spring, when vast numbers of phytoplankton 'bloom' across the oceans over a few weeks. This rapid growth can act as a feedback mechanism; it can either speed up or slow down other changes in the physics and chemistry of the seas. The researchers were particularly interested in measuring the partial pressure of carbon dioxide at the surface of the sea, and finding how much it varies from place to place in spring and summer-vital knowledge for understanding how the oceans absorb and release this gas. Data researchers already had suggested that partial pressure values varied smoothly both over the course of the year and from place to place in the great ocean basins.

At the same time as the field studies, Pieter Tans, of the University of Colorado, Inez Fung, of NASA's Goddard Space Science Laboratory in New York, and Taro Takahashi of Columbia University in New York State, were developing models. They compared measurements of partial pressures of carbon dioxide across the world's oceans with data from models of atmospheric circulation. They concluded that the oceans were much less important in absorbing carbon dioxide than researchers had assumed; they estimated that the oceans absorbed only between 0.3 and 0.8 gigatonnes of carbon each year.

Tans, Fung and Takahashi inferred that the carbon must be absorbed somewhere on land, through some as yet unidentified process. But the JGOFS research has revealed another possibility, based on detailed surveys of the oceans carried out in the spring and summer of 1989 and 1990. The team consisted of researchers from 15 laboratories, working in close collaboration with JGOFS groups from the US, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada. They found that, in the northeast Atlantic, to the south of Iceland and to the west of the British Isles, the sea takes up widely varying amounts of carbon dioxide at different places in the ocean. And this variation in absorption related directly to the distribution of plankton, which they found was very patchy across this sector of the seas (Nature, 8 March 1991).

In one area, from 45 degrees to 50 degrees North, around 1000 kilometres west of Lands End, the peak reduction in the partial pressure of carbon dioxide at the surface of the seas relative to that in the atmosphere was about 70 microatmospheres (u atm) in late May and early June. That compares with Tans, Fung and Takashashi's estimate of a mean annual air-sea difference of 15 u atm for the southern sector of the North Atlantic, based on summer values of 1 u atm (from July to October) and winter values of 29 u atm (from January to April). Further north, where existing data suggested that the summer difference was around 37 u atm, Andrew Watson and colleagues at Plymouth Marine Laboratory found that the difference could be as much as 200 u atm near sea ice around Greenland, compared to the atmospheric level of around 350 u atm. For the North Atlantic, the annual averages that Tans and his colleagues used seem to have underestimated the power of the sea to absorb carbon dioxide. If other oceans are as variable as the results from JGOFS suggest, the carbon budget might balance without an extra terrestrial sink.

But as well as measuring carbon dioxide in surface waters, the JGOFS teams delved deeper into the mechanisms that carry carbon dioxide within the oceans, finding records in sea floor sediments of the interplay between oceans, the composition of the atmosphere and changes in the climate. Much of what researchers know about this complicated system comes from the Earth's cycles of ice ages. Air bubbles trapped in polar ice have shown that there was much less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the height of the last ice age, which ended between 10 000 and 15 000 years ago. The slide into an ice age starts because the Earth's orbit around the Sun varies; this has only a small direct effect on temperature but triggers other changes. In particular about 200 gigatonnes of carbon disappear from the atmosphere as the planet cools, only to return over a few thousand years at the end of the glacial period. In round terms, this is the same amount of carbon that human activities have added to the atmosphere over the past two centuries.

Where did the carbon dioxide go during the ice ages? The colder, drier glacial climate would not have helped fix carbon in plants and soil on land. Although there was more land, because the sea level was lower and the continental shelves were exposed, these gains would have been offset by greater ice cover at high latitudes and less rainfall at mid and low latitudes. The carbon apparently went into the deep oceans. Data from marine sediments have shown that the 'biological pump', acting via photosynthesis in surface waters, became stronger and the deep water circulation more sluggish. More carbon settled out of surface waters as organic particles, and its return to the surface was slower.

Switching on an ice age

The researchers are especially interested in changes in ocean processes near the poles, particularly the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean. These regions probably acted as the switch for the change between glacial and interglacial conditions. Today, there are far less phytoplankton growing in the Southern Ocean than there could be; they do not use up all the available nutrients such as nitrate and phosphate. Some scientists have suggested that we could exploit this potential, and cut down on carbon dioxide in the air, by artificially supplying trace elements such as iron, whose absence might limit plankton growth .

If more phytoplankton grow, they can create a positive feedback mechanism; during ice age cycles, cooler weather meant more plankton, and less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which in turn led to further cooling. At the end of an ice age, similar ocean and atmosphere feedbacks (working in the opposite way) helped to warm the world. In addition, changes in ocean circulation at this time carried more heat to high latitudes, acting either as the initial switch, or as a very early response to orbital wobbles. This helped to release more carbon dioxide from deep water, because the ocean then mixes more actively.

Apparently, the main effect of changes in marine productivity in the past has been to destabilise the climate, reinforcing temperature trends that were already under way. But the mechanisms and their implications for the future are still uncertain. Are the biological controls on the movement of carbon dioxide between air and sea more or less important than physical factors? Are the oceanic responses that contributed to the long-term changes in carbon distribution of the ice ages relevant to the current situation of rapidly increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

These are questions that JGOFS is trying to answer. Although we need many more detailed investigations of different ocean regions, the aim is to partition reliably the net uptake of carbon between biological and physical processes, and between marine and terrestrial sinks, without the need for painstaking surveys over all ocean basins. The JGOFS measurements from the North Atlantic agree with preliminary models developed by Arnold Taylor and his colleagues at Plymouth Marine Laboratory that link the partial pressure of carbon dioxide at a particular locality with temperature, depth of mixing and abundance of phytoplankton in the upper ocean. Because satellites can monitor temperature and chlorophyll-a plankton pigment-over large areas, it should be possible in the future to estimate carbon fluxes across the world by combining such data with information on sea conditions, cloud cover and seasonal factors that relate to latitude.

Oceanographers are now designing large-scale field studies in collaboration with the World Ocean Circulation Experiment to obtain the 'sea truth' data needed to calibrate such a global monitoring exercise. But monitoring studies require long-term commitment: for signals that are naturally noisy, it may take twenty years or more before we can demonstrate statistically significant trends and identify linked changes .

Even then, it might be difficult to separate cause and effect. If researchers identify a trend in the past, this is not necessarily a reliable guide to the future behaviour of such complex, nonlinear systems. If we want to make predictions, we will have to understand the component processes in depth.

For that reason, the JGOFS programme includes investigations of what happens to carbon throughout the water column, so that models can take full account of these interacting subsystems. Without such information, any predictions we can make today are speculative and have to be simplistic. For example, we could assume that global warming will result in processes that now happen at mid-latitudes moving towards the poles. On that basis, the expected changes are hardly reassuring; a shift from cold to warm water regimes seems to favour positive feedback mechanisms, which release more carbon dioxide.

Warmer waters, in general, are very stable near the surface, contain phytoplankton of small cell size and are very efficient at recycling nutrients and biogenic material in the upper ocean. As a result, relatively little carbon sinks to deeper water.

In contrast, colder oceans mix much more in winter, renewing the supply of nutrients to the surface layers. Phytoplankton productivity is greatest in the spring, as light increases and the surface water warms and stabilises. After this spring bloom, a pulse of plankton debris falls through the water column, an effect enhanced by the larger cell size of phytoplankton in temperate and near-polar oceans. Processes that help the debris clump together speed up the rate at which it sinks.

Wolfgang Barkmann, of Kiel University, and John Woods, director of marine sciences for the Natural Environment Research Council, developed a model for these processes. It successfully simulates the main seasonal changes in physical properties, their effect on the numbers of phytoplankton and where they were in the water column.

The JGOFS North Atlantic programme looked closely at blooms and the fate of carbon at sites of contrasting productivity along a north-south transect in both 1989 and 1990. The researchers trapped material falling through the water at particular depths, and took cores from the sea floor, to determine sedimentation rates and the relationship of the sediment record to long-term changes in ocean productivity and climate. In the upper ocean, the aim was to balance the carbon budget for the sites and periods of intensive study, with independent measurements of over 20 rates and processes.

The JGOFS teams are still analysing these data. But they have already proved both significant and novel. In particular, the spring bloom itself was much more complicated than expected. Instead of major changes in a few species over large areas of the sea, there was a complex succession of separate blooms in different communities of plankton. Furthermore, adjacent water masses with subtly different physical and chemical properties bloomed in distinct ways, at different times. Material in water near the ocean floor showed that blooms in late summer also made a significant contribution to the carbon flux to deeper water, but their scale and timing varied markedly from 1989 to 1990.

The study also highlighted problems in quantifying the role of dissolved organic carbon (This Week, 15 December 1990) and the need to take account of the vertical migration of zooplankton. Investigations led by Martin Angel, of the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences Deacon Laboratory, showed that the abundant amphipod Themisto, has a big part to play in the rate at which the biological pump works. It feeds at night on aggregates of phytoplankton between 30 and 50 metres below the surface; at dawn, it dived between 200 and 300 metres, where it defecated. The effect of this energetic daily movement is to speed up the flow of carbon from near the surface to the deep ocean.

Further surprises came from experiments and measurements in which the research ship followed the flow of surface water, using drifting buoys tracked by satellite. In 1989, US and German research vessels carried out several studies of this type, each lasting between two and three weeks. In 1990, the British JGOFS team was involved in a more ambitious experiment, using the NERC research ships RRS Discovery and RRS Charles Darwin to follow a marker buoy for nearly seven weeks from the end of April to mid-June.

Ten other buoys tracked the movement of a larger area of water, 10 000 square kilometres in all, where the researchers had surveyed the abundance of phytoplankton and carbon dioxide parameters at the start of their study. They released the marker buoy at a relatively quiet site at the edge of a small eddy. But by the end of the study it had drifted more than 500 kilometres, and the other buoys had spread over more than 260 000 square kilometres. It was the equivalent of starting a study of a woodland in Norfolk and finding one tree in Scotland within two months and the others scattered throughout the rest of Britain. Furthermore, some of the leaves would be halfway to the stratosphere, because the products of marine photosynthesis also move vertically, at rates of around 100 metres a day.

Such dynamic complexity makes it essential that future JGOFS projects pay as much attention to what goes where as to what grows where. Understanding the rules that govern the biological and physical behaviour of carbon throughout the world's oceans is a scientific problem on a daunting scale. But we need to know what turns the wheels, and, more importantly, what changes gear, for the ocean carbon cycle: otherwise, major policy decisions on greenhouse gas emissions will be made in ignorance of whether a temperature rise of a few degrees might trigger, via plankton, a self-accelerating rise in carbon dioxide. Or, if you prefer to be optimistic, whether global warming may never happen.

Phillip Williamson and Arnold Taylor work on the NERC Biogeochemical Ocean Flux Study (UK JGOFS) at Plymouth Marine Laboratory. John Gribbin is physics consultant to New Scientist.

* * *

1: A technological fix that does not work

Debate is raging among marine biologists and climatologists over the possibility that iron could provide the answer to the increased greenhouse effect that human activities may have set in train. The prospect of such a 'technological fix' stems from studies carried out by John Martin and Steve Fitzwater, of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratory, in California.

They suggested that the growth of plankton at high latitudes is limited by the amount of iron available in the sea. Carbon dioxide might be drawn out of the atmosphere more effectively by adding some form of soluble iron to the oceans in these regions. But the latest evidence indicates that even if their suggestion is correct, there is no significant prospect of exploiting this to reduce the build-up of carbon dioxide.

The notion that the growth of phytoplankton in Antarctic waters, at least, might depend on the amount of iron available goes back half a century. It was suggested by Sir Alister Hardy, perhaps best known today for his idea that our ancestors spent a large part of their time in water-the 'aquatic ape' hypothesis.

In the mid-1980s, Martin and Fitzwater tested the idea by adding dissolved iron compounds to water from the northeast Pacific Ocean. They found that this stimulated a rapid growth of plankton, until all the available nitrogen in the water is used up (Nature, vol 331 p 341). Without the extra iron, at least in test tubes, plankton stop growing when nutrients such as phosphates and nitrates are still available-even if there is plenty of sunlight for photosynthesis. The rationale behind this is that iron is an important ingredient in many life processes, including the production of chlorophyll; without chlorophyll the plants cannot photosynthesise.

Climatologists were intrigued. Air bubbles trapped in the Antarctic ice show that during the most recent ice age there was less carbon dioxide and more wind-blown dust in the air-dust that included iron. They reasoned that dry, dusty winds blowing out of continental interiors, typical of an ice age climate, might enrich the oceans with iron compounds. This would encourage photosynthesis and draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, reducing the greenhouse effect in a self-sustaining feedback that cooled the planet.

In February 1988, I suggested (Nature, vol 331 p 570) that if these ideas were correct, we might be able to fix the present and future carbon dioxide problem, by adding iron compounds to the ocean. Martin had come to similar conclusions and proposed that a supertanker of iron could start the next ice age.

That suggestion, made as he says, 'more or less facetiously at a Journal Club Lecture at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in July 1988' (US JGOFS Newsletter, April 1990, p 5) ran into a storm of opposition. Environmentalists protested that such action would be ecological vandalism, likely to do more harm (by disrupting natural ecological cycles) than good (by reducing carbon dioxide).

Charles Miller, of Oregon State University, pointed out that if such treatment was applied to the North Pacific, nutrients near the surface of the ocean could be used up and biological activity would stop. This would have catastrophic implications for fisheries, as well as for the uptake of carbon dioxide. Things would only change when a large vertical mixing event dredged up more nutrients from the depths.

Other researchers, including Karl Banse, of the University of Washington, Seattle, argued that iron was not really a limiting factor on ocean productivity; the effect applied only on the test tube scale-a conclusion hotly refuted by Martin and Fitzwater. But just as this stimulating scientific debate was getting into its stride, it seems to have run into a brick wall.

Tsung-Heng Peng, of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Tennessee, and Wallace Broecker, of Columbia University, in New York, have modelled the effects of adding iron to the seas. They conclude that 'even if iron fertilisation worked perfectly it would not significantly reduce the atmospheric carbon dioxide content.' From their model, after 100 years of totally successful fertilisation, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be reduced by only about 50 parts per million (Nature, vol 349 p 227).

At present, the carbon dioxide concentration is about 350 ppm. Even if we make strenuous efforts to curb the growth in emissions of carbon dioxide, atmospheric levels look set to increase to more than 500 ppm over the next 100 years. Even worse, over the same period the enhancement of the greenhouse effect by other gases such as chlorofluorocarbons and methane looks set to be more than the increase due to carbon dioxide alone.

Iron fertilisation may be a key to understanding natural climatic changes of the past, but does not seem to be the answer to the problems posed by the anthropogenic greenhouse effect. The effort would be better devoted to other aspects of the greenhouse problem.

2: Plankton and the Gulf Stream

If we want to find out more about plankton and the climate, we need a year by year record, which the Continuous Plankton Recorder survey (CPR) provides. Established in the 1930s by Sir Alister Hardy, the CPR has surveyed the northeast Atlantic each month from 1948 to the present day. The survey is now an independent Foundation with support from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) and an international funding consortium.

The CPR records show that the numbers of phytoplankton and zooplankton in the northeast Atlantic declined from 1948 to 1980; since then, the trend has reversed. Michael Colebrook, of Plymouth Marine Laboratory, and Bob Dickson, of the MAFF at Lowestoft, have shown that these trends were the result of natural environmental factors. In particular, wind strength was more important than temperature.

Ten years ago we identified another environmental factor that correlated with data from the CPR-the position of the Gulf Stream off Cape Hatteras, between 65 degrees and 80 degrees West, after it leaves the US coastline. In years when the northern boundary of the Gulf Stream lay farther north, the CPR data showed more copepods (a major group of zooplankton) in sea areas west and northwest of Britain.

But at that time there was data on the position of the Gulf Stream for only 12 years; we thought of the link as a statistical curiosity. With the help of Nick Baker, John Stephens and Michael Colebrook, I have now analysed the data again with extra care and extended the time series to cover the 24 years from 1966 to 1989.

We found that the revised correlations between annual averages in the north-south position of the Gulf Stream and the abundance of plankton were statistically significant for many more groups of plankton than before, and applied to the North Sea and the open Atlantic. Furthermore, the relationship was remarkably good, considering the problems in taking samples. These arise because the distribution of the plankton is patchy, and it is easier both to collect and identify larger species. The position of the Gulf Stream also varies considerably from month to month; this was smoothed out in the annual averages.

While more detailed interpretation is now going on, we can draw several important conclusions. First, the abundance of plankton in the North Atlantic responds to subtle climatic and oceanographic factors that operate over many thousands of kilometres. Secondly, and as a result of this, many of the changes in biological activity from year to year are not merely the result of chaotic dynamics within the upper ocean. Thirdly, it follows that we should be able to determine the main climatic factors controlling the ocean carbon cycle and predict its future behaviour.

The CPR data set varies considerably; for example, in the west of the central North Sea, there was a six-fold decline in the abundance of copepods from roughly 1950 to 1980. These results arose under a relatively stable climate-we can expect global warming of a few degrees to have a much greater effect, with the possibility of a synchronised response worldwide.

Huge swaths of plankton planned to fight climate change
Huge swaths of plankton planned to fight climate change
By Matt Richtel
The New York Times
Tuesday, May 1, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO: Can plankton help save the planet?

Some Silicon Valley technocrats are betting that it just might. In an effort to ameliorate the effects of global warming, several groups are working on ventures to grow vast floating fields of plankton intended to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and carry it to the depths of the ocean. It is an idea, debated by experts for years, that still sounds like science fiction - and some scholars think that is where it belongs.

But even though many questions remain unanswered, the first commercial project is scheduled to get under way in May when the WeatherBird II, a 115-foot, or 35-meter, research vessel, heads out from its dock in Florida to the Galapagos and the South Pacific.

The ship plans to dissolve tons of iron, an essential plankton nutrient, over a 10,000-square-kilometer patch, the equivalent of 2.47 million acres. When the trace iron prompts growth and reproduction of the tiny organism, scientists on the WeatherBird II plan to measure how much carbon dioxide the plankton ingests.

The idea is similar to planting forests full of carbon-inhaling trees, but in desolate stretches of ocean. "This is organic gardening, not rocket science," said Russ George, the chief executive of Planktos, the company behind the WeatherBird II project. "Can it possibly be as easy as we say it is? We're about to find out."

For George, this is not just science and environmentalism but business, possibly big business. Around the world, new treaties and regulations are forcing corporations to look for ways to offset their carbon emissions, and Planktos and its competitors may be able to charge millions of dollars for their services.

And that is where this science project takes on a Silicon Valley twist, and a healthy dose of scientific skepticism. Planktos - along with Climos, a competitor started by a former dot-com millionaire whose mother is one of the nation's top oceanographers - wants to commercialize ocean fertilization.

Their efforts underscore a growing effort to pull carbon from the atmosphere. Solutions include planting or restoring forests and - once many economic and technical obstacles are overcome - capturing tons of carbon from coal burning for electricity and oil refineries, piping it back underground or burying it under the ocean.

The technological solutions are starting to come from Silicon Valley, where investors and innovators are turning to environmental businesses. They are investing, too, in fossil fuel alternatives like wind, solar and ethanol power.

The financial returns for reducing carbon could be considerable, said Daniel Kammen, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

In Europe, where there is a market for carbon credits, it is now worth only $2 to offset a ton of carbon emissions. But not long ago, that figure was $35, and it is expected to rise again as the limits imposed under the Kyoto Protocol on global warming start to bite.

Planktos believes that it can make a healthy profit if it receives $5 a ton for capturing carbon dioxide.

"The cost of offsetting carbon through these technologies is less than the cost of building solar panels or windmills," Kammen said.

"There's no question that this is going to grow," he said of various carbon offset strategies.

But the question in the case of iron fertilization is whether the exuberance and marketing spirit of Silicon Valley and its can-do attitude are getting ahead of scientific reality. And some oceanographic experts say that there is a risk of doing more harm than good from artificially stimulating plankton growth in the ocean.

It is widely accepted by scientists that dumping iron in certain areas of the ocean can cause plankton to bloom. But there is considerable skepticism over whether doing so will lead to long-term absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, said Ken Buesseler, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Buesseler said that while carbon might be absorbed initially, there was ample evidence that when the plankton was eaten or decomposed, at least some of the carbon wound up going back into the atmosphere. The level of absorption depends on how much of the resulting mass of plankton sinks to the sea bed.

And some scholars in the field are concerned that creating plankton blooms could release methane and nitrous oxide, which might increase greenhouse gases. "There are some potentially dangerous side effects," said Paul Falkowski, professor of geology and marine science at Rutgers University.

Here is possibly a new way for Gore to reduce his greenhouse gas footprint.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,294032,00.html

By killing a few moose, he could kill two birds with one stone, prove he is a hunter to gain the vote of hunters in any future run for office and also reduce his greenhouse gas footprint. Only one moose is equal to an 8,077 mile automobile trip each year! There are 100,000 moose in Norway alone! Think of the potential there.

Just a question, maybe the guy that wants to study plankton could also include the moose? Another thought, are moose in the computer global warming models yet?

P.S. Perhaps the moose in Norway explains global warming in the Northern Hemisphere vs the Southern Hemisphere? Maybe we need to ship half of them to the southern tip of South America?

Re: Huge swaths of plankton planned to fight climate change
"Save the planet" ???
Man, some people must be fool enough to think they must save the planet while they can't even take care of themselves, their elderly or their mortgage.
The planet and its living things have lived through cataclysmic asteroids, the hell of volcanoes mass eruptions, continent drift, too much CO2, not enough CO2, dinosaurs(I'm told they are rather crude as to environmental consciousness), mice, insects, ice ages, interglacials, Attila, 2 world wars ... so they will outlast all of what we can imagine and certainly don't need to be "saved" by us, assuming we only could, we minuscule and unsignificant humans in desperate need to feel self important.
What sickening hubris

miniTAX, to understand the environmental movement, you have to understand that it is a form of religion. You probably do already, but I noticed the parallel with the plankton idea. Most religions have some kind of Messiah, and the tree huggers are looking for theirs. Too bad they can't find something more significant than sea plankton.

Global warming has many elements of religion, human sin, such as SUVs and evil corporations, the coming doomsday, and they are looking for living righteously as well by riding bicycles, getting rid of SUVs, using only 1 or 2 segments of toilet paper, etc., and now their saviour might be sea plankton. Oh, and one of their prophets is Al Gore. Holy day is Earth Day instead of Christmas or some other religious holdiay. People want to feel good about themselves and believe in something, and the environmental movement provides that avenue for many people that lack anything else in their lives.