Ocean Frontier Fertility: SeaWiFS View of LOHAFEX

Posted by James Bowery on Wednesday, 28 January 2009 19:05.

Continuing the series on Ocean Frontier Fertility, an actual iron fertilization experiment is starting as I write this. You can observe the resulting changes in the ocean’s chlorophyll via the SeaWiFS satellite images from 49S, 16W. To page between image dates of the SeaWiFS satellite click on the “<" and ">

” icons above the images presented on that page.

Here is an example of the chlorophyll image taken yesterday, which represents the “before” condition:

You’ll notice that portions are obscured by clouds. That’s a limitation of satellite imaging.

This experiment, called LOHAFEX (Loha is the Hindi word for iron, Fertilization EXperiment) is a joint project between scientists from Germany and India. Unlike similar US experiments, many privately financed, that have been killed by “environmentalists”, the Germans and Indians managed to survive the gauntlet of political opposition. Those of us familiar with the “scientific” community’s behavior in human sociobiology will not be too surprised to learn that the US experiments were stopped by “environmentalists” on the grounds that “not enough is known about iron fertilization”—seemingly oblivious to the fact that knowledge is only gained by testing hypotheses in these pesky things called “experiments”.

Anyway, I wish the Germans and Indians well, but let us not forget that it was US scientists that pioneered the field and then were politically suppressed to make way for German and Indian leadership.

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Comments:

Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 29 Jan 2009 01:20 | #

Follow the provided link to the Ocean Frontier Fertility series for the background. If you have objections to the contents you may respond there more productively than here.

PS: It so happens I’ve been putting together a business plan for an industrial scale fish farm today, so you’ve chosen the wrong guy to disagree with on the merits of fish farming.

Posted by wtf on Thu, 29 Jan 2009 10:51 | #

James Bowery. You have absolutely no idea why the shadowy ‘elites’ have targeted the White race for drastic reduction have you?

Why don’t you take this ‘marvellous’ idea to Sir Geldof so he can continue to ‘feed the world’.

Posted by Lurker on Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:33 | #

You have absolutely no idea why the shadowy ‘elites’ have targeted the White race for drastic reduction have you?

Go on wtf, you’re the man in the know, care to enlighten us?

Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:14 | #

Re wtf, as for the former rock star, Geldof, it is clear he is simply looking for replacement social status so he’s not really interested in real solutions to the Malthusian dilemma unless they happen to be emotionally appealing to girls.

But you’re wrong about my having no idea why the white race is targeted for genocide. I have many ideas but my working hypothesis is simple Jewish virulence taking the form of paranoid reactions in high places.

You seem to have an hypothesis of which you are more certain.

Please explain.

Posted by kurt9 on Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:01 | #

Perhaps the purpose of ocean frontier fertility is to increase the feasibility of seasteading.

Check out the seasteading institute at: http://www.seasteading.org

Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:28 | #

kurt9, as I said, check out the prior series on Ocean Frontier Fertility linked to in the original post.

“Seasteads” (homesteads on the ocean frontier) will be informed by their relationship to the ecosystem that they create even more so than are terrestrial homesteads. You have to center your designs around artificial marine ecosystems and that starts with autotrophic organisms.

Posted by James Bowery on Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:50 | #

Diamed, I don’t think the case is that clear-cut for “terrestrial freedom before any other”. There are degrees of freedom and sometimes all you need is a little breathing room to catch your breath and clear your head—which is why a frequent response to we heretics is “Sounds like you have too much time on your hands.”

Indeed, Machiavelli basically advised against letting up on oppression in any way once opposition to that oppression had made itself apparent. I would argue that opposition to our oppressors has made itself apparent in the form of the Internet freedom of discourse. This is a wedge we can hammer with more freedom in the form of physical hence ecological hence economic dimensions.

Posted by Andrew on Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:08 | #

I noticed that a lot of ‘critics’ of Planktos (the US company mentioned in the article) were very troubled by the fact that the voluntary carbon credits that Planktos sold were a completely unregulated market. Were these critics interested in protecting consumers from being duped, or were they afraid that if individuals were allowed to express their opinion on the validity of Planktos’ claims by buying carbon credits from Planktos (and hence supporting them financially), that those individuals would start to get dangerous ideas about the possibility of decentralized means of deciding what gets done and what is true?

Perhaps these critics would rather markets were only used for ‘what markets do best’ like deciding whether Britney Spear’s music is superior to Justin Timberlake’s…

Posted by danielj on Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:31 | #

Obviously, Timberlake’s music is superior.

Posted by danielj on Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:33 | #

The ocean’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide is not entirely understood.

James, do you happen to know whether Earth’s vegetation or the oceans are a better CO2 sink?

Posted by kurt9 on Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:52 | #

My understanding is that the phytoplankton in the Oceans accounts for 90% of the photosynthesis on Earth and that land plants account for only like 10%. Can anyone confirm if this is true.

Posted by James Bowery on Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:15 | #

A big part of the problem is the presence of enormous ocean deserts in which there is little photosynthetic activity hence very little biomass, but which have enormous potential due to all nutrients and sunlight being available except for the limiting micronutrient of iron.

Here is a diagram of existing photosynthesis quantities from Wikipedia:

Diagram of the carbon cycle. The black numbers indicate how much carbon is stored in various reservoirs, in billions of tons (“GtC” stands for GigaTons of Carbon and figures are circa 2004). The purple numbers indicate how much carbon moves between reservoirs each year. The sediments, as defined in this diagram, do not include the ~70 million GtC of carbonate rock and kerogen.