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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (20571)	2/21/2008 9:22:27 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 36921

Neo, there is a food chain. By getting chlorophyll to grow, little beasties start grazing on it, then bigger beasties come in to feed on them. And bigger. Eventually, they all die and sink to the bottom of the ocean where their skeletons and residual organic material join the umpty petabillion tons of sedimentary goop which settles on the bottom and becomes the oceanic sedimentary layer which trundles along the oceanic conveyor to subduction zones where it powers volcanoes and feeds into oil and gas reservoirs. Some goes down deep and comes up in Hawaii, powering upwelling volcanoes. By providing missing nutrients, plant and animal growth accelerate. We can catch the fish we want to eat. CO2 absorption is accelerated. Mqurice

To: neolib who wrote (20571)	2/21/2008 9:39:33 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36921

Neo, Very astute observation.. As I recall the history of that first experiment, they just dumped all the iron into the ocean in one fell swoop, rather than spreading it out over time. The result was a dense phytoplankton bloom that created a feeding frenzy. And apparently, this is where you stopped reading the article, having found the seemingly derogatory information you were looking for. However, go down 2 more paragraphs and you'll find this: Phytoplankton grew so successfully that concentrations of the photosynthetic pigment chlorophyll increased by a factor of 30 to 40 in the water, accounting for the green color. This time, scientists measured a marked decrease in the carbon dioxide concentration of the water. Because this part of the Pacific normally vents carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the experiment reduced the natural flow of the greenhouse gas into the air (SN: 7/22/95, p.53). Thus, HOW AND WHERE you fertilize phytoplankton matters. The latter test spread out the fertilization over the period of a week. It's no different that putting too much fertilizer on your lawn and finding that what proliferates are fast-growing weeds that are more capable of utilizing the sudden surge in nutrients. And the TYPE of phytoplankton you design your fertilizer for makes a significant difference. Non-calcified phytoplankton will die on the surface and decay.. They are simply too light to sink on their own. But certain types of Diatoms are much more favorable to fostering the biological pump that sinks the carbon laden flora to the ocean depths. Which underscores the VERY REASON that research into the process should continue, so that we can understand what kind of cocktail yields the results that augment the natural biological pump. It may require that we "seed" the proper type of phytoplankton at the point of fertilization, creating the equivalent of a "seed and feed" mixture. Or it might require adding Salp oozoids to create a quick "grazing" effect that eats the phytoplankton and then sinks the carbon to the ocean depths via fecal deposits. Salps don't hang out on the surface, as Krill (Zooplankton) do. They "parachute" up from the depths to feast on phytoplankton, and then return to those depths where they defecate and die, increasing the odds that the carbon they injest sinks to the bottom. auburn.edu Hawk