A-list Washington insider on climate and environment policy, Earth & Water Group Founder, Brent Fewell, has over 25 years of experience in public policy, advocacy, and environmental law. He has just co-authored an article in the influential independent Washington policy newspaper The Hill with climate journalist Alex Carlin. Their conclusion is that “Congress would be wise to consider legislation to support Ocean Pasture Restoration (OPR). More fish in our ocean pastures and less carbon in the atmosphere would be a win-win for the environment and an increasingly hungry world.”
This article is massively important. Its clear analysis directly confronts the moral turpitude and intellectual incoherence of objections to geoengineering. Ocean Pasture Restoration is the method led by Russ George with the Haida Salmon Restoration Project in its successful 2012 fertilization which nearly quadrupled the pink salmon catch, with an economic rate of return over one hundred to one.
Fewell and Carlin say that based on this success, “one would have expected the world to rush to embrace OPR and George as a hero. But that didn’t happen, unjustly the opposite happened. George was maligned by many in the green movement who rejected OPR. But why? Because OPR offers a nature-based solution, removing carbon already in the atmosphere and repurposing it into new ocean life, rather than reducing carbon emissions. Many within the mainstream climate movement and radical environmentalists viewed OPR as a threat to their agenda of targeting and eliminating fossil fuels.”
Here we see the nub of the stupidity and cowardice that infests climate science and politics. The salmon catch chart linked above provides simple compelling evidence of the effectiveness of feeding salmon fingerlings before they die at sea. But somehow fisheries scientists are unable to even comment on the validity of this evidence. It appears they have been bullied into silence by the gross politicisation of climate change.
The “agenda of targeting and eliminating fossil fuels” is something continually invoked by its advocates as “of course the top priority”. But where is the evidence for this ritual assertion? There is none, outside partisan mythology. This alleged “top priority” can at best remove about 1% of radiative forcing per year, effectively nothing.
Reliance on decarbonisation leaves the world wide open to the massive risk of tipping points that could be prevented by investment in new technology. OPR presents a paradigm shift in climate politics, a way to cooperate with the fossil fuel industry and the capitalist system to secure sustained abundance and stability. That is exactly why greens oppose it.
The politics of climate made Russ George a convenient demon to justify the foolish assault on the world energy system at the core of IPCC thinking. Instead of tilting at windmills with the IPCC, serious analysts should take this article in The Hill as a starting point to change their views on climate priorities, creating the policy for major immediate investment in technologies such as OPR.
Bridging the political gap on climate policy requires recognition that the scientific world has gone down a wrong path in calling for an end to fossil fuel use. US Republicans will engage constructively once emission reduction is not the main climate agenda. Converting CO2 into biomass and other profitable commodities through technologies like OPR offers the vision of a way to fix the climate without attacking the world economy. Climate politics has to escape from its partisan tribal blockages. Ocean pasture technology is the type of game-changing breakthrough that is urgently needed. As The Hill article says, “OPR presents the opportunity of our lifetime to address climate change without bankrupting the U.S. economy and will give the U.S. time to transition to new cleaner sources of fuel in a more sensible timeframe and in a cost-effective manner.”
Robert Tulip
https://russgeorge.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Alaska_Salmon_Economics_Chart1-470x260.png
The climate solution that can also restore our seas
By Brent Fewell and Alex Carlin, Opinion Contributors – 10 May 2022
The National Academies of Sciences released a report in December 2021 assessing potential benefits of ocean-based carbon dioxide removal strategies and calling for more research to learn how these methods could help mitigate the impacts of climate change. Among the strategies recommended is ocean iron seeding or ocean pasture restoration (OPR).
The idea behind OPR has been around for decades. In 1993, John Martin, a top American oceanographer, proposed the first of a dozen experiments, adding miniscule amounts of iron to patches of the South Pacific Ocean stimulating the production of algae and ocean biomass. Martin had shown that many parts of our world’s oceans are starving for iron, lack of which suppresses ocean photosynthesis and its biological pump.
Just like agricultural pastures, “ocean pastures” need an array of nutrients for health and productivity. Algae, phytoplankton, is the base of aquatic food webs. It’s the primary food source for zooplankton, such as copepods and krill, which in turn are the primary food for whales, fish and seabirds.
Fast forward 20 years, an entrepreneur environmentalist, Russ George, embarked on the largest ocean iron project to date 200 miles off the coast of Alaska and Canada. Supported by Canadian native, provincial and federal governments they dusted an ocean area 60×60 miles with just 100 tons of iron rich dust in the Gulf of Alaska. The goal was to restore the regional salmon fisheries. And, indeed, it did.
Within days, the ocean was teeming with life. Whales, dolphin, tuna, salmon and seabirds feasted on restored plankton blooms. Satellite imagery revealed the bloom grew to be roughly the size of the state of Virginia. The pasture captured 150-200 million tons of CO2 in the form of billions of tons of new ocean plankton — fish food. It sequestered 15 million to 20 million tons of CO2 miles down in the deep abyss. The following year Alaska’s pink salmon witnessed historic catches, four times those forecasted, delivering hundreds of millions of dollars (in USD) into the state’s economy. It cost under $5 million.
The Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation project was a resounding success. One would have expected the world to rush to embrace OPR and George as a hero. But that didn’t happen, unjustly the opposite happened. George was maligned by many in the green movement who rejected OPR.
But why? Because OPR offers a nature-based solution, removing carbon already in the atmosphere and repurposing it into new ocean life, rather than reducing carbon emissions. Many within the mainstream climate movement and radical environmentalists viewed OPR as a threat to their agenda of targeting and eliminating fossil fuels.
The National Academies of Science report confirms the legality of the work and potential in OPR. However, parts of the report may perpetuate misinformation and fallacies often advanced by OPR opponents. For example, the report implies that OPR might create unintended harmful algal blooms. It appears to wrongly state that there was no link to enhanced salmon returns in the Haida project, despite Alaska harvesting the largest salmon catch in history in 2013.
The Chesapeake Bay and Gulf of Mexico have taught us that too much algae in the wrong ocean location can be harmful, but OPR is only possible hundreds of miles offshore in the deepest regions of the ocean where iron is extremely limited, and no record of hazardous algal blooms exist.
Experts estimate climate change could cost the U.S. $2 trillion per year over the next 50 years due to fires, flood and drought.
OPR presents the opportunity of our lifetime to address climate change without bankrupting the U.S. economy and will give the U.S. time to transition to new cleaner sources of fuel in a more sensible timeframe and in a cost-effective manner.
OPR may also provide solutions to endangered species, such as Right Whales. New federal rules to reduce whale entanglements endanger Maine’s $1.4 billion lobster industry. Growing evidence suggests that ship-whale collisions may be the biggest threat to the whales’ survival rather than lobster trap entanglement. Right Whales, like most marine mammals, migrate to ocean pastures with plentiful food. George’s proposed OPR projects in New England would attract whales away from major shipping channels and lobster grounds, thereby protecting whales and commercial fishing, while quickly bringing back Atlantic Salmon to historic abundance.
Congress would be wise to consider legislation to support OPR. More fish in our ocean pastures and less carbon in the atmosphere would be a win-win for the environment and an increasingly hungry world.
Brent Fewell is the former deputy assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Water and founder of Earth & Water Law.
Alex Carlin is a foreign correspondent for environment, specializing in climate, for the Center for Media and Democracy. He has blogged from every United Nation Climate Conference since 2014.
A-list Washington insider on climate and environment policy, Earth & Water Group Founder, Brent Fewell, has over 25 years of experience in public policy, advocacy, and environmental law. He has just co-authored an article in the influential independent Washington policy newspaper The Hill with climate journalist Alex Carlin. Their conclusion is that “Congress would be wise to consider legislation to support Ocean Pasture Restoration (OPR). More fish in our ocean pastures and less carbon in the atmosphere would be a win-win for the environment and an increasingly hungry world.”
This article is massively important. Its clear analysis directly confronts the moral turpitude and intellectual incoherence of objections to geoengineering. Ocean Pasture Restoration is the method led by Russ George with the Haida Salmon Restoration Project in its successful 2012 fertilization which nearly quadrupled the pink salmon catch, with an economic rate of return over one hundred to one.
Fewell and Carlin say that based on this success, “one would have expected the world to rush to embrace OPR and George as a hero. But that didn’t happen, unjustly the opposite happened. George was maligned by many in the green movement who rejected OPR. But why? Because OPR offers a nature-based solution, removing carbon already in the atmosphere and repurposing it into new ocean life, rather than reducing carbon emissions. Many within the mainstream climate movement and radical environmentalists viewed OPR as a threat to their agenda of targeting and eliminating fossil fuels.”
Here we see the nub of the stupidity and cowardice that infests climate science and politics. The salmon catch chart linked above provides simple compelling evidence of the effectiveness of feeding salmon fingerlings before they die at sea. But somehow fisheries scientists are unable to even comment on the validity of this evidence. It appears they have been bullied into silence by the gross politicisation of climate change.
The “agenda of targeting and eliminating fossil fuels” is something continually invoked by its advocates as “of course the top priority”. But where is the evidence for this ritual assertion? There is none, outside partisan mythology. This alleged “top priority” can at best remove about 1% of radiative forcing per year, effectively nothing.
Reliance on decarbonisation leaves the world wide open to the massive risk of tipping points that could be prevented by investment in new technology. OPR presents a paradigm shift in climate politics, a way to cooperate with the fossil fuel industry and the capitalist system to secure sustained abundance and stability. That is exactly why greens oppose it.
The politics of climate made Russ George a convenient demon to justify the foolish assault on the world energy system at the core of IPCC thinking. Instead of tilting at windmills with the IPCC, serious analysts should take this article in The Hill as a starting point to change their views on climate priorities, creating the policy for major immediate investment in technologies such as OPR.
Bridging the political gap on climate policy requires recognition that the scientific world has gone down a wrong path in calling for an end to fossil fuel use. US Republicans will engage constructively once emission reduction is not the main climate agenda. Converting CO2 into biomass and other profitable commodities through technologies like OPR offers the vision of a way to fix the climate without attacking the world economy. Climate politics has to escape from its partisan tribal blockages. Ocean pasture technology is the type of game-changing breakthrough that is urgently needed. As The Hill article says, “OPR presents the opportunity of our lifetime to address climate change without bankrupting the U.S. economy and will give the U.S. time to transition to new cleaner sources of fuel in a more sensible timeframe and in a cost-effective manner.”
Robert Tulip
https://russgeorge.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Alaska_Salmon_Economics_Chart1-470x260.png
The climate solution that can also restore our seas
By Brent Fewell and Alex Carlin, Opinion Contributors – 10 May 2022
The National Academies of Sciences released a report in December 2021 assessing potential benefits of ocean-based carbon dioxide removal strategies and calling for more research to learn how these methods could help mitigate the impacts of climate change. Among the strategies recommended is ocean iron seeding or ocean pasture restoration (OPR).
The idea behind OPR has been around for decades. In 1993, John Martin, a top American oceanographer, proposed the first of a dozen experiments, adding miniscule amounts of iron to patches of the South Pacific Ocean stimulating the production of algae and ocean biomass. Martin had shown that many parts of our world’s oceans are starving for iron, lack of which suppresses ocean photosynthesis and its biological pump.
Just like agricultural pastures, “ocean pastures” need an array of nutrients for health and productivity. Algae, phytoplankton, is the base of aquatic food webs. It’s the primary food source for zooplankton, such as copepods and krill, which in turn are the primary food for whales, fish and seabirds.
Fast forward 20 years, an entrepreneur environmentalist, Russ George, embarked on the largest ocean iron project to date 200 miles off the coast of Alaska and Canada. Supported by Canadian native, provincial and federal governments they dusted an ocean area 60×60 miles with just 100 tons of iron rich dust in the Gulf of Alaska. The goal was to restore the regional salmon fisheries. And, indeed, it did.
Within days, the ocean was teeming with life. Whales, dolphin, tuna, salmon and seabirds feasted on restored plankton blooms. Satellite imagery revealed the bloom grew to be roughly the size of the state of Virginia. The pasture captured 150-200 million tons of CO2 in the form of billions of tons of new ocean plankton — fish food. It sequestered 15 million to 20 million tons of CO2 miles down in the deep abyss. The following year Alaska’s pink salmon witnessed historic catches, four times those forecasted, delivering hundreds of millions of dollars (in USD) into the state’s economy. It cost under $5 million.
The Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation project was a resounding success. One would have expected the world to rush to embrace OPR and George as a hero. But that didn’t happen, unjustly the opposite happened. George was maligned by many in the green movement who rejected OPR.
But why? Because OPR offers a nature-based solution, removing carbon already in the atmosphere and repurposing it into new ocean life, rather than reducing carbon emissions. Many within the mainstream climate movement and radical environmentalists viewed OPR as a threat to their agenda of targeting and eliminating fossil fuels.
The National Academies of Science report confirms the legality of the work and potential in OPR. However, parts of the report may perpetuate misinformation and fallacies often advanced by OPR opponents. For example, the report implies that OPR might create unintended harmful algal blooms. It appears to wrongly state that there was no link to enhanced salmon returns in the Haida project, despite Alaska harvesting the largest salmon catch in history in 2013.
The Chesapeake Bay and Gulf of Mexico have taught us that too much algae in the wrong ocean location can be harmful, but OPR is only possible hundreds of miles offshore in the deepest regions of the ocean where iron is extremely limited, and no record of hazardous algal blooms exist.
Experts estimate climate change could cost the U.S. $2 trillion per year over the next 50 years due to fires, flood and drought.
OPR presents the opportunity of our lifetime to address climate change without bankrupting the U.S. economy and will give the U.S. time to transition to new cleaner sources of fuel in a more sensible timeframe and in a cost-effective manner.
OPR may also provide solutions to endangered species, such as Right Whales. New federal rules to reduce whale entanglements endanger Maine’s $1.4 billion lobster industry. Growing evidence suggests that ship-whale collisions may be the biggest threat to the whales’ survival rather than lobster trap entanglement. Right Whales, like most marine mammals, migrate to ocean pastures with plentiful food. George’s proposed OPR projects in New England would attract whales away from major shipping channels and lobster grounds, thereby protecting whales and commercial fishing, while quickly bringing back Atlantic Salmon to historic abundance.
Congress would be wise to consider legislation to support OPR. More fish in our ocean pastures and less carbon in the atmosphere would be a win-win for the environment and an increasingly hungry world.
Brent Fewell is the former deputy assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Water and founder of Earth & Water Law.
Alex Carlin is a foreign correspondent for environment, specializing in climate, for the Center for Media and Democracy. He has blogged from every United Nation Climate Conference since 2014.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/413098969.2772070.1652642271476%40mail.yahoo.com.
Why is there so much methane beneath ancient shelf seabeds?
Many of the submerged peats are shallow freshwater peats by origin, whose generally low pore water sulfate allows methane formation.
Deeper organic rich sediments of marine origin should have much less methane than submerged bogs and tundra due to high sulfate.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/1649778927.4049932.1652648580599%40email.ionos.co.uk.
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Thanks Greg and Ernie for these interesting responses. I also received a very positive comment from Victor Smetacek, leader of ocean iron fertilization scientific field testing in the Southern Ocean.
Greg, I don’t think your phrase “hope for the best” is an accurate characterisation of the Haida experimental method. It specifically targeted pink salmon at the critical stage of their two year life cycle in the ocean, at the time and place where they were most vulnerable to death from starvation. The quadrupling of pink salmon yield worth a billion dollars over four generations as clearly shown in the graph is hardly something that could be achieved without rigorous planning.
Please don’t just accept the malicious assertions of ideological critics of this project. Its amazing level of political status as a geoengineering talisman indicates the scope for distortion. Of course there is also risk of exaggeration of benefits, but the data in the graph from the Alaska authorities is independent and conclusive. What else could have caused such a major and valuable anomaly other than the Haida iron test?
And by the way, the extreme scandal of Canadian government theft of project data is still something that has not been widely understood or publicised. An underlying problem is the arrogance of the scientific community, with widespread acceptance of the word of ideologues, apparently due to the belief that only the academic guild has a right to conduct such tests. I hope the article in The Hill will cause some chastening and humility among those who accepted the condemnation of the Haida test.
Robert Tulip
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Peter Fiekowsky
Hi All
Perhaps permission has been given by the same people who gave permission for plastic in very much larger quantities.
Stephen
From: planetary-...@googlegroups.com <planetary-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Peter Fiekowsky
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Subject: Re: [HCA-list] RE: The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration
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Comment from Alex Carlin
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Subject: Re: The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration
Hello All
I am Alex Carlin, a co-author of the The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration. Ernie, thanks for you thoughtful and useful comments. Greg, about your 2 final points, please allow me to correct you:
On the contrary, human activity has reduced iron (dust) delivery to the Pacific since pre-industrial times. Because of human caused higher CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, the dry land masses that historically for centuries provided the "dust in the wind" that was delivered to the ocean pastures and nourished them into abundances of fish etc, that extra CO2 caused those dry land masses to become more moist which has led to a huge drop in that nourishing dust being picked up and then falling on the ocean pastures.
As you know, Russ and his team set up workstations and laboratories that worked and studied for years before carefully applying his ocean-science theories and then they meticulously canvassed the Haida eddy and placed the dust where it would be most beneficial. This process was fully vetted and approved by the Canadian national, provincial and native governments. Your cavalier ad hominem attack style is not helpful here, and the future generations that will be affected by the way we choose and pursue our solutions to Climate Ruin will not appreciate your supercilious style. Please take my comment as constructive criticism, as I hope we can move forward together as colleagues in a productive manner, without condescensions.
Alex Carlin
Subject: RE: The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration
Mic drop 😊 And I had to chortle when Peter claimed that no one is advocating full-scale deployment, and then outlines a plan for … full-scale deployment (just because it’s “limited” to 100 regions, and intermittent doesn’t make it full-scale deployment, Peter; read the studies). Too clever by half. wil
|
WIL BURNS Visiting Professor Environmental Policy & Culture Program Northwestern University
Email: william...@northwestern.edu Mobile: 312.550.3079
1808 Chicago Ave. #110 Evanston, IL 60208 https://epc.northwestern.edu/people/staff-new/wil-burns.html
Want to schedule a call? Click on one of the following scheduling links:
I acknowledge and honor the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa, as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk nations, upon whose traditional homelands Northwestern University stands, and the Indigenous people who remain on this land today.
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And funny you should ask about Brent Fewell, who is one of the darlings of an organization called PERC (https://www.perc.org/people/brent-fewell/). You can read about PERC’s approach to climate change here: https://www.desmog.com/property-and-environment-research-center/, which includes a healthy dose of climate denialism, no doubt fueled by its large amounts of funding from the Koch Brothers, fossil fuel companies, e.g. Exxon, and lots of private foundation money, most of which, wait for it, also comes from the Koch Brothers. PERC’s entire rationale for existence is to deny that there’s an anthropogenic link to climate change, and if one exists, to try to eviscerate any role of government to address it. So, pardon my skepticism that this guy is an honest broker in blithely advocating this technological fix to climate change.
Here's an excerpt from a report by Greenpeace on PERC, and if you want to claim Greenpeace is biased here, explain what part of this rendition is incorrect:
"PERC is a member of the Cooler Heads Coalition and has been listed as a 'networking participant' in the Alliance for America, the 'wise use' umbrella group. Executive Director Terry Anderson was a member of George W. Bush's presidential campaign environmental advisory staff, as was current Secretary of the Interior and former PERC fellow Gale Norton. Kathryn Ratte of PERC addressed the Petroleum Association of America on 'a more grassroots approach to telling the industry's story in the nation's public schools.' She stated that the problem is that 'politically correct environmentalism invaded U.S. public classrooms years ago, and is helping to hold the door shut on your message.' Another problem is that 'children resonate with environmental topics.' Ratte recommended tailoring industry materials to all subjects, including language arts to get at students from all possible angles. Ratte also recommended that industry hold teacher workshops 'in resorts or campuses in pleasant surroundings' to get educators to use their materials. At one point, the meeting turned into a fund raising event. The presenters recommended industry also form partnerships with organizations such as the Foundation for Teaching Economics and PERC because 'If it has a corporate logo on it, it is propaganda.. You need a foot in the door where somebody else is pushing the door open for you... The people best able to push open the door are non-profit education organizations that teachers already think of as being credible,' reasoned Ratte.
Sent: Tuesday, 17 May 2022 2:47 PM
To: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>; Robert Tulip <rtuli...@yahoo.com.au>; Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [geo] Re: [HCA-list] RE: The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration
Dear Greg,
The Hill article, which I co-wrote, essentially calls for several more HAIDAs ASAP. You call for several more HAIDAs ASAP. Therefore, I am perplexed as to why you continue to imply problems with the article. Let me list your unfounded fears:
Again, Greg, I ask you sincerely to please rise to a minimum level of constructive collegiality that is so necessary for us to make progress in saving future generations from Climate Ruin. Time is of the essence now, let's not waste it.
Alex Carlin
Dear Greg,
The Hill article, which I co-wrote, essentially calls for several more HAIDAs ASAP. You call for several more HAIDAs ASAP. Therefore, I am perplexed as to why you continue to imply problems with the article. Let me list your unfounded fears:
- You conjure some scary "full scale deployment" specter - what exactly are you talking about? One HAIDA deposits thousands of times less dust than nature does so are you imagining a thousand HAIDAs in a single season? Again, The Hill advocates exactly what you advocate - let's do a few HAIDAs ASAP and yes, in your words, let's "see what happens" since it is perfectly safe to do so, and will supply the data that you and I both want.
- A few HAIDAs per season would constitute and wonderfully satisfy your request for "more research done", and yet you strangely imply you want to do some further academic research (waiting for the "science to be done") before doing more HAIDAs, which contradicts your implications elsewhere ("Russ experiment needs to be repeated, this time with a carefully considered and executed plan for actually measuring the effects of such iron addition") ...again, as you know, doing one up to, let's say 10 HAIDAs in one season is totally safe, and nobody expects 10 simultaneous HAIDAs to happen any time soon, so what is your fear about?
- "The stance there is that the evidence is in, the science has been done and we should proceed with full scale deployment, with the innuendo that anyone disagreeing with that conclusion are obstructionists." Your mistake is again your term "full scale deployment" - what does this mean? Several HAIDAs in one season is risk-free and constitutes exactly what we need to do, which is gather data, which is exactly what you want. Your statement here is 100% straw man arguing - as Peter told you, nobody is proposing this negative thing you are fearing, so please stop accusing people of proposing this.
- "That's going to require oceanographers...labeling them and others who ask for more evidence as arrogant, malicious, obstructionist, ideologues." Again, straw man arguing, nobody is doing that. In fact, we are doing the opposite, we are exactly asking for more evidence, more data, by doing the very best possible evidence and data collection, which is several more HAIDAs ASAP.
- "Hill article/advertisement" - well, apparently my request for you to stop being supercilious is falling on deaf ears, or would you care to back up your rather libelous and certainly offensive accusation that we wrote an advertisement?
Again, Greg, I ask you sincerely to please rise to a minimum level of constructive collegiality that is so necessary for us to make progress in saving future generations from Climate Ruin. Time is of the essence now, let's not waste it.
Alex Carlin
From: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2022 1:47 AM
To: Robert Tulip <rtuli...@yahoo.com.au>; Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com>
Cc: ernie.e...@gmail.com <ernie.e...@gmail.com>; geoengineering <geoengi...@googlegroups.com>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; brent....@earthandwatergroup.com <brent....@earthandwatergroup.com>; Russ George <russ....@gmail.com>; Alex Carlin <pyn...@hotmail.com>; Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [geo] Re: [HCA-list] RE: The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration
I might suggest that Peter Fiekowsky read Peter Fiekowsky’s new book, or listen to some of his interviews, e.g. this one: ▶ EARTH911 Interviews: Peter Fiekowsky, Healthy Climate Alliance (spreaker.com). He clearly indicates that OIF can do a lot of the heavy lifting to get to his fantastical 50 GtCO2 removal per year. He’s not suggesting that we need research to assess whether it CAN; he’s laying it out as one of the four primary ways to get there. And look back in the CDR archives; it’s replete with claims by Peter that OIF is a proven approach. It’s only when challenged that we see coy positions like this one. wil
|
WIL BURNS Visiting Professor Environmental Policy & Culture Program Northwestern University
Email: william...@northwestern.edu Mobile: 312.550.3079
1808 Chicago Ave. #110 Evanston, IL 60208 https://epc.northwestern.edu/people/staff-new/wil-burns.html
Want to schedule a call? Click on one of the following scheduling links:
I acknowledge and honor the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa, as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk nations, upon whose traditional homelands Northwestern University stands, and the Indigenous people who remain on this land today.
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To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/CAEr4H2mWYZL1Ljy8eZH-iWbf-w5mFm2V9M8xCZDDnPS9aWxdNQ%40mail.gmail.com.
A number of comments in this discussion have raised fascinating strategic concerns about the article in The Hill.
John Crusius provides a good overview of the scientific context for Ocean Iron Fertilization. In response to John’s question why The Hill article uses Ocean Pasture Restoration, the reason is that this designates the targeted small-scale use of OIF to enhance commercial fisheries productivity. OPR is mainly about fish, with the additional aim to generate scientific information that would assist decisions on larger scale OIF.
On Peter Fiekowsky’s comment that no one advocates large scale OIF, this is actually the agenda proposed by Franz Oeste and Renaud de Richter et al in their 2017 article on Iron Salt Aerosol. They call for a doubling of atmospheric iron content, in a way that would provide a much more slow and diffuse addition of iron, providing a number of additional benefits in addition to the direct OIF effects. I support this call from Oeste and de Richter, while recognising that precursor scientific research will be needed to gain political agreement.
The risks of aiming quickly for iron restoration would be far less than not doing so. The fragility and sensitivity of our planetary climate system and looming tipping points mean that steps like iron addition and albedo enhancement are needed to pull us back from the precipice of hothouse tipping points. Failure to implement such systemic methods is rather like denying iron pills to a person with severe anaemia. OPR can provide a commercially funded bipartisan and safe way to research the implications of this transformative earth healing concept, if governments allow it.
On Greg Rau’s question whether the oceans are iron deficient, Russ George argues at several blogs, such as here and here, that scientific papers show emissions have made the planet greener, and in turn this has reduced dust, which means less iron at sea. As well, there is extensive scientific literature on the primary role of iron dust in the feedback processes that caused ice ages. This means steps that move the planet toward such a cooler state would be good.
What about the political critique raised by Wil Burns? Fewell and Carlin claim in their article in The Hill that OPR could address climate change at low cost in a way that enables a slow transition from fossil fuels. This is not climate denial as Wil seems to infer by noting that Fewell has previously written for the Property and Environment Research Center. It is a practical assessment, challenging the inflammatory and polarising argument from the IPCC that we need to speed up emission reduction to address climate change.
CDR using methods such as OIF, together with albedo enhancement, shows every prospect of becoming a superior substitute for decarbonisation.
Such a strategic shift in climate policy would:
Emission reduction is far too small, slow, expensive and contested to be the primary climate solution, able to provide only a marginal contribution to the needed cuts to radiative forcing.
As I summarised in my initial comment in this thread available at https://planetaryrestoration.net/f/the-hill-article-on-ocean-pasture-restoration, “Bridging the political gap on climate policy requires recognition that the scientific world has gone down a wrong path in calling for an end to fossil fuel use. US Republicans will engage constructively once emission reduction is not the main climate agenda. Converting CO2 into biomass and other profitable commodities through technologies like OPR offers the vision of a way to fix the climate without attacking the world economy. Climate politics has to escape from its partisan tribal blockages.”
On the Greenpeace critique of PERC, it simply assumes the fossil fuel industries are deceptive and malevolent. Of course there is much track record to justify this suspicion, but writing off PERC, and by extension Fewell on that basis begs the question whether alternative geoengineering-based strategic directions for climate stability and security could be better than the current failed IPCC methods. Recall the Paris Accord pledges if fully implemented would increase total annual emissions by 2030, according to Climate Action Tracker. Digging harder into the hole of emission reduction is not a viable solution.
Climate denial arises in part from the scientific observation that fully achieving Paris Accord pledges would barely dent temperature increase, while bringing great expense and disruption. A better approach is to get the deniers to recognise the security peril posed by a warming planet and support geoengineering as the only practical way to mitigate the dangers.
Robert Tulip
From: geoengi...@googlegroups.com <geoengi...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Wil Burns
Sent: Tuesday, 17 May 2022 2:21 PM
To: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>; Robert Tulip <rtuli...@yahoo.com.au>; Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com>
Cc: ernie.e...@gmail.com; geoengineering <geoengi...@googlegroups.com>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; brent....@earthandwatergroup.com; Russ George <russ....@gmail.com>; Alex Carlin <pyn...@hotmail.com>; Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [CDR] Re: [geo] Re: [HCA-list] RE: The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration
And funny you should ask about Brent Fewell, who is one of the darlings of an organization called PERC (https://www.perc.org/people/brent-fewell/). You can read about PERC’s approach to climate change here: https://www.desmog.com/property-and-environment-research-center/, which includes a healthy dose of climate denialism, no doubt fueled by its large amounts of funding from the Koch Brothers, fossil fuel companies, e.g. Exxon, and lots of private foundation money, most of which, wait for it, also comes from the Koch Brothers. PERC’s entire rationale for existence is to deny that there’s an anthropogenic link to climate change, and if one exists, to try to eviscerate any role of government to address it. So, pardon my skepticism that this guy is an honest broker in blithely advocating this technological fix to climate change.
Here's an excerpt from a report by Greenpeace on PERC, and if you want to claim Greenpeace is biased here, explain what part of this rendition is incorrect:
"PERC is a member of the Cooler Heads Coalition and has been listed as a 'networking participant' in the Alliance for America, the 'wise use' umbrella group. Executive Director Terry Anderson was a member of George W. Bush's presidential campaign environmental advisory staff, as was current Secretary of the Interior and former PERC fellow Gale Norton. Kathryn Ratte of PERC addressed the Petroleum Association of America on 'a more grassroots approach to telling the industry's story in the nation's public schools.' She stated that the problem is that 'politically correct environmentalism invaded U.S. public classrooms years ago, and is helping to hold the door shut on your message.' Another problem is that 'children resonate with environmental topics.' Ratte recommended tailoring industry materials to all subjects, including language arts to get at students from all possible angles. Ratte also recommended that industry hold teacher workshops 'in resorts or campuses in pleasant surroundings' to get educators to use their materials. At one point, the meeting turned into a fund raising event. The presenters recommended industry also form partnerships with organizations such as the Foundation for Teaching Economics and PERC because 'If it has a corporate logo on it, it is propaganda.. You need a foot in the door where somebody else is pushing the door open for you... The people best able to push open the door are non-profit education organizations that teachers already think of as being credible,' reasoned Ratte.
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WIL BURNS Visiting Professor Environmental Policy & Culture Program Northwestern University
Email: william...@northwestern.edu Mobile: 312.550.3079
1808 Chicago Ave. #110 Evanston, IL 60208 https://epc.northwestern.edu/people/staff-new/wil-burns.html
Want to schedule a call? Click on one of the following scheduling links:
I acknowledge and honor the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa, as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk nations, upon whose traditional homelands Northwestern University stands, and the Indigenous people who remain on this land today.
|
From: Wil Burns
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2022 8:50 PM
To: Greg Rau <
gh...@sbcglobal.net>; Robert Tulip <rtuli...@yahoo.com.au>; Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com>
Cc: ernie.e...@gmail.com; geoengineering <geoengi...@googlegroups.com>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; brent....@earthandwatergroup.com; Russ George <russ....@gmail.com>; Alex Carlin <pyn...@hotmail.com>; Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [CDR] Re: [geo] Re: [HCA-list] RE: The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration
Mic drop 😊 And I had to chortle when Peter claimed that no one is advocating full-scale deployment, and then outlines a plan for … full-scale deployment (just because it’s “limited” to 100 regions, and intermittent doesn’t make it full-scale deployment, Peter; read the studies). Too clever by half. wil
|
WIL BURNS Visiting Professor Environmental Policy & Culture Program Northwestern University
Email: william...@northwestern.edu Mobile: 312.550.3079
1808 Chicago Ave. #110 Evanston, IL 60208 https://epc.northwestern.edu/people/staff-new/wil-burns.html
Want to schedule a call? Click on one of the following scheduling links:
I acknowledge and honor the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa, as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk nations, upon whose traditional homelands Northwestern University stands, and the Indigenous people who remain on this land today.
|
From: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Greg Rau
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2022 8:48 PM
To: Robert Tulip <rtuli...@yahoo.com.au>; Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com>
Cc: ernie.e...@gmail.com; geoengineering <geoengi...@googlegroups.com>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; brent....@earthandwatergroup.com; Russ George <russ....@gmail.com>; Alex Carlin <pyn...@hotmail.com>; Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [CDR] Re: [geo] Re: [HCA-list] RE: The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration
Dear Peter,
.
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One of the platitudes frequently advanced in the CDR debate is “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” This implies, in the context of OIF, that it is “the good.” But
that case has clearly not been made yet, and a few non-peer reviewed Russ George blogs, or articles in the Hill, aren’t going to change that. With all due respect to folks like Robert, Brent, and Peter, I’m going to have to rely on the assessments of actual
ocean scientists, including Greg, and those who produced the NAS Ocean CDR report, which because it pushed back on OIF was branded by some on here as some kind of tool of the “mitigation crowd,” whatever that means.
The Hill piece essentially focuses on a straw man, probably the least substantial reservation expressed about large-scale deployment of OIF, the possibility that OIF could produce harmful algae blooms. It wholly ignores the far more substantive concerns expressed
in the NAS report about OIF, notably the prospects that nutrient robbing in the Southern Ocean could have extremely serious negative impacts in regions hundreds, or thousands, of miles away, which has serious implications geostrategically and in terms of the
food and livelihood needs of huge sectors of the global population. It also ignores the discussion of how OIF could restructure the ecological configuration of these areas in ways that are wholly unpredictable. AND, it concludes that the sequestration potential
is fairly modest. None of this counsels against additional research, but it assuredly does not counsel for large-scale deployment as many on this thread do (and that includes you, Peter, see the quotes I posted from you).
I also question the “emergency” narrative advanced here, which essentially argues that since the world is burning, any response is better than none. Well, if you pour kerosene on a burning world, it can make things worse. That’s analogous to saying, “let’s
go ahead with this, because, assuredly, it will make things better.” That’s often not the case when we respond to exigencies in ways that embrace the emergency frame. The world is littered with examples, including responses to invasive species in many parts
of the world, where the cure was worse than the initial affliction. This counsels in favor of a thoughtful, iterative, incremental, and transparent research program of the nature outlined by the NAS in its final section of its chapter on OIF, not rapid deployment
at the scales discussed here.
And I stand by comments about PERC and its raison d'etre. The Hill piece is part and parcel of this approach, i.e. convince folks that we can make a “gradual” transition from fossil fuels that will permit fossil fuel interests to burn as much as the $37 trillion
of proven reserves as they can before we make an energy transition. It invokes the kind of moral hazard argument that folks on the list pooh pooh regularly, but seem to fulsomely embrace here.
Dear Brent,
If you read Peter’s new book, I think you’ll see why I disagree with that statement, ditto the comments of others about what the scale of deployment SHOULD be. That doesn’t suggest
moving carefully from laboratory, to mesocosm, to small-scale field experiments, and it doesn’t suggest independent monitoring.
As for PERC, well, tell me what’s incorrect about the quotes I posted, where PERC suggests bringing educators to “nice” environments to bring them into the fold, and to have fossil fuel companies use the ”nameplates” of nonprofits to hide their identities.
I’m sorry, but the cynical game is out there in black and white. PERC is largely funded by fossil fuel companies, and foundations funded by fossil fuel companies to perpetuate these companies as long as possible, including using speculative solutions to help
extend their lives. It also gets a lot of its money from the Koch Brothers, notorious climate deniers. Daniel Benjamin at PERC is also notorious for denying that climate change is linked to human activities, and even if they are, argues that it’s “beneficial”
to society, see, e.g.: Daniel K. Benjamin, The
Benefits of Climate Change, Property and Environment Research Center, September, 2007.
Nothing you’ve said here denies that. So, feel free to be indignant, but I think the true indignation should be that we’re listening to folks with a clear ulterior agenda, an agenda that even it admits freely. wil
|
WIL BURNS Visiting Professor Environmental Policy & Culture Program Northwestern University
Email: william...@northwestern.edu Mobile: 312.550.3079
1808 Chicago Ave. #110 Evanston, IL 60208 https://epc.northwestern.edu/people/staff-new/wil-burns.html
Want to schedule a call? Click on one of the following scheduling links:
I acknowledge and honor the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa, as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk nations, upon whose traditional homelands Northwestern University stands, and the Indigenous people who remain on this land today.
|
From: Brent Fewell <brent....@earthandwatergroup.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2022 11:32 AM
To: Wil Burns <w...@feronia.org>; Robert Tulip <rtuli...@yahoo.com.au>; 'Greg Rau' <gh...@sbcglobal.net>; 'Peter Fiekowsky' <pfi...@gmail.com>
Cc: ernie.e...@gmail.com; 'geoengineering' <geoengi...@googlegroups.com>; 'Carbon Dioxide Removal' <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'Russ George' <russ....@gmail.com>;
'Alex Carlin' <pyn...@hotmail.com>; 'Healthy Climate Alliance' <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>; Brian Yablonski (br...@perc.org) <br...@perc.org>
Subject: RE: The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration
Wil, no one is suggesting charging ahead without careful deliberation as you seem to be implying. I don’t disagree with your concerns about unintended consequences for uniformed actions, but nature has already taught us a great deal out iron dust in the ocean. Your disparaging remarks about organizations like PERC tells me all I need to know. None of us has all the answers, but I’m hoping we have the same goal. I’ll now remove myself from this thread, so you can carry on.
Brent
Brent Fewell, Esq., Founder and Chair | Earth & Water Law LLC
1455 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20004
(202) 664-9297 (c) | www.earthandwatergroup.com
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Hello Brent,
Thank you very much for engaging in this debate with your email below and your article with Alex Carlin. I am not familiar with PERC, but its mission to “examine how markets encourage cooperation instead of conflict over natural resources and how property rights make the environment an asset by giving owners incentives for stewardship” provides an interesting basis to explore how protection of fossil fuel property rights, with their large sunk costs and social inertia, can align to measures to restore the climate. It is no wonder that efforts to destroy these property rights create such polarisation.
The consensus in the IPCC rejects direct cooling measures due to the misconceived moral hazard argument that geoengineering would reduce political pressure to end fossil fuel use. Unlike the consensus on the causes of warming, this dominant view is political not scientific. Far from making the perfect the enemy of the good, the ‘emission reduction alone’ approach makes the impossible the enemy of the possible.
Ocean Iron Fertilization, and therefore also Ocean Pasture Restoration, have been under an effective ban because of this false reasoning, even though OIF would deliver far cheaper cooling than emission cuts could.
OPR has the additional economic and ecological benefit of directly targeting enhanced fish stocks to increase biomass and support food security.
Politicians should take note of the argument that using OPR and other methods will buy time to allow a slower renewable transition, with numerous benefits in slowing warming and reducing economic disruption. This is a least cost abatement argument that should be attractive to conservatives, as a practical strategy to address global warming while continuing to use fossil fuels.
Climate policy is sometimes depicted as a three legged stool, with emission reduction, greenhouse gas removal and direct cooling each having equal contribution. The IPCC rejects this argument, instead seeing emission reduction as the main strategy, with a minor contribution from GGR and none from direct cooling. A more practical approach would be to make direct cooling the main immediate goal, mitigating the risk of tipping points especially at the poles. Methods like OPR could then gradually scale up, addressing legitimate scientific concerns about safety. The way to reduce uncertainty is to proceed with will managed field tests.
In that scenario, there may be no need to cut emissions beyond what market forces will prompt. Fossil fuel companies could become important allies of the shared task of sustaining a liveable planet. A geoengineering-led climate policy could even keep temperature rise below 1.5 degrees without emission cuts. GGR would then kick in to grow to much bigger scale than total emissions, producing a path back toward Holocene stability.
The devastating critique of reliance on emission reduction as the main approach is that committed warming from past emissions is about forty times greater than the warming effect of new annual emissions. Cutting world emissions even to net zero would do little about this much bigger climate forcing already baked into the earth system. Subsidies for public goods should go to the most efficient and effective ways to deliver outcomes. The only strategy that can cool the planet is geoengineering, combining immediate measures to increase albedo such as marine cloud brightening and refreezing the poles with medium term expansion of new industries such as OPR to convert greenhouse gases into useful products.
The whole effort to decarbonise the economy, while having important environmental and economic benefits, is marginal to stabilising the climate. Cutting emissions does nothing to mitigate the immediate security risks of extreme weather, biodiversity loss, hotter temperatures and sea level rise, and creates major political risk. Geoengineering can be a safe and cheap way to buy time to enable a slower transition away from fossil fuels.
Regards
Robert Tulip
From: Brent Fewell <brent....@earthandwatergroup.com>
Sent: Friday, 20 May 2022 12:20 AM
To: Robert Tulip <rtuli...@yahoo.com.au>; w...@feronia.org; 'Greg Rau' <gh...@sbcglobal.net>; 'Peter Fiekowsky' <pfi...@gmail.com>
Cc: ernie.e...@gmail.com; 'geoengineering' <geoengi...@googlegroups.com>; 'Carbon Dioxide Removal' <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>; 'Planetary Restoration' <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; 'Russ George' <russ....@gmail.com>; 'Alex Carlin' <pyn...@hotmail.com>; 'Healthy Climate Alliance' <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>; Amos Eno <ae...@landcan.org>; McKie Campbell <mcam...@bwstrategies.com>; jku...@conservamerica.org
Subject: RE: The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration
Thank you, Robert, for your email and to all for the thoughtful critique and comments on The Hill article. For those who may be suspicious of my motivations, please know that there are no ulterior or hidden motives. My article was not an advertisement for Russ George, but rather was an effort to promote thoughtful discussion and engagement on a very promising idea. As a former EPA water regulator, I have witnessed far too many times where the perfect becomes the enemy of the good. Like many on this thread, I have endeavored over my career to support and advocate for ideas and actions that can make a big difference in restoring degraded ecosystems, contributing to a healthier environment and improving the human condition. I strongly support continued research into OIF as the NAS has recommended, but don’t support the idea that we must wait until all uncertainty is eliminated. Thanks, again, for the thoughtful and civil engagement on this important topic. And I look forward to the continuing dialogue, but more importantly action.
Brent
Brent Fewell, Esq., Founder and Chair | Earth & Water Law LLC
1455 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20004
(202) 664-9297 (c) | www.earthandwatergroup.com
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I’m curious, Peter, since I’ve worked a lot with the IPCC over the years, about your reference to its “charter.” Can you provide a reference to said “charter,” and the language in said charter that emphasizes that the overarching objective should be to protect “nature.” The UNGA resolution that established the IPCC, 43/53 contains no such language that I can see.
On May 22, 2022, at 6:26 PM, Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com> wrote:
Wil-You're a lawyer and smarter than me. Please find language in their charter prioritizing human survival. Or please stand down.Peter
On Sun, May 22, 2022 at 3:24 PM Wil Burns <w...@feronia.org> wrote:
I’m curious, Peter, since I’ve worked a lot with the IPCC over the years, about your reference to its “charter.” Can you provide a reference to said “charter,” and the language in said charter that emphasizes that the overarching objective should be to protect “nature.” The UNGA resolution that established the IPCC, 43/53 contains no such language that I can see.
wil
WIL BURNS
Visiting Professor
Environmental Policy & Culture Program
Northwestern University
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Mobile: 312.550.3079
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From: Wil Burns
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2022 8:50 PM
To: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>; Robert Tulip <rtuli...@yahoo.com.au>; Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com>
Cc: ernie.e...@gmail.com; geoengineering <geoengi...@googlegroups.com>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; brent....@earthandwatergroup.com; Russ George <russ....@gmail.com>; Alex Carlin <pyn...@hotmail.com>; Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [CDR] Re: [geo] Re: [HCA-list] RE: The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration
Mic drop 😊 And I had to chortle when Peter claimed that no one is advocating full-scale deployment, and then outlines a plan for … full-scale deployment (just because it’s “limited” to 100 regions, and intermittent doesn’t make it full-scale deployment, Peter; read the studies). Too clever by half. wil
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Peter. You made this controversial assertion, so I think the burden of proof is on you. You also referred to a “charter,” and I’m still waiting to see evidence that such charter exists, or for that matter anything in any of the six reporters that support your proposition that the IPCC’s purported focus on “nature” protection exists.
Herb,
I think your interpretation is correct. Notably, the language that follows after your quotation is as follows: “Such a level should be achieved within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.”
Two of these three clauses focus on anthropogenic concerns, i.e. food security and sustainable development, which again undercuts Peter’s thesis.
wil
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That’s exactly the catch, they never defined what was meant by “dangerous interference”, but presumably it means a decrease in ecosystems’ and humans’ ability to adapt to climate change.
This was deliberately left undefined, because UNFCCC is a consensus document that everybody has to agree to, and anyone can block, so defining a criterion for failure was carefully ignored so that the Convention could be called a success that nobody would veto. If you have no goal, you never know if you have reached it!
When UNFCCC was being drafted at the UN in 1989 I reviewed it for scientific content as Senior Scientific Officer for Climate Change and Biodiversity at the United Nations Centre for Science and Technology for Development. I added criteria for dangerous interference to the draft, including monitoring the most climatically sensitive ecosystems for deleterious impacts of climate change. We already knew at that point that corals had passed the bleaching tipping point. I also added requirements for comprehensive and complete accounting of ALL GHG sources AND sinks to the UNFCCC draft. All of this was removed by governments so that the treaty was void of specific criteria, and therefore could never be concluded to have failed.
It is a treaty that cannot meet its own goals because they are not defined!
This is no political accident, this lapse was intended to prevent any interference with fossil fuel business as usual by both the fossil fuel producing and consuming countries.
From: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of H simmens <hsim...@gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, May 22, 2022 at 6:45 PM
To: Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com>
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/20C5669E-64FC-46C3-92F7-6D9277B1E028%40gmail.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/CAEr4H2%3DuYmHXaBKuMs1kMmSYFUf%2B_pJx5dczpAWzeNysZrZY7A%40mail.gmail.com.
The treaty was legally denominated a “framework” convention for a reason, i.e. it wasn’t intended to establish granular and stringent obligations on its parties, largely because the science of climate change was far less certain in the early 90s than now, and maybe more importantly, cost-effective solutions were pretty limited. Article 17, the “protocols” provision was included to help ensure that more substantive obligations could be imposed once the science became more certain, and the solutions were more forthcoming. So, Tom’s good work, and that of many others, to define these terms probably didn’t have a chance at the time, but I’d like to think it helped drive the language in the Paris Agreement, which operationalized the term “dangerous” to a much larger extent. wil
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This is where "dangerous climate change" and 2 C come from: (and
btw, has anybody noticed that "dangerous climate change" has been
usurped by "avoiding the worst of climate change" ??? I think this
happened at COP before last, but am not certain... )
Rijsberman and Swart, Targets and Indicators of Climate
Change, The Stockholm Environmental Institute, 1990. One degree C
is page viii,
last paragraph, 2 degrees C is first paragraph, page ix.
https://mediamanager.sei.org/documents/Publications/SEI-Report-TargetsAndIndicatorsOfClimaticChange-1990.pdf
The actual
designation of the 2 C dangerous limit to warming comes from
Stockholm Institute
and is not arbitrary but a reasoned scientific evaluation. This
evaluation was
sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and
United Nations
Environmental Program (UNEP) very specifically for the new
Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to assign a warming limit to
dangerous climate
change.
The results of this effort were from a working advisory group and edited by Rijsberman and Swart. The considered not only 2C, but 1C too and when reflected upon today the 1 C limit was very insightful and accurate far beyond the knowledge of the day, Whereas the 2 C limit was just the 1 C limit carried a slight bit further. Below are the money shots from the report:
“Beyond 1.0 °C may elicit rapid, unpredictable, and non-linear responses that could lead to extensive ecosystem damage.”
"An absolute temperature limit of 2.0 °C can be viewed as an upper limit beyond which the risks of grave damage to ecosystems, and of non-linear responses, are expected to increase rapidly."
These rapid, unpredictable, and non-linear responses are what we are seeing today as active climate tipping or abrupt Earth systems collapses. They happen 10 to 100 times faster and more extreme than what we see in climate modeling upon which our climate polices are based.
Cheers,
B
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Spot on. And since Peter hasn’t turned up this magical “charter” of the IPCC, I think UNGA Resolution 43/53 is as close as we’re going to get, and it clearly does not support this proposition. I really find it offensive to suggest that the IPCC has some kind of secret agenda to minimize protection of humans; we should be better than that here.
WIL BURNS
Visiting Professor
Environmental Policy & Culture Program
Northwestern University
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I acknowledge and honor the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa, as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk nations, upon whose traditional homelands Northwestern University stands, and the Indigenous people who remain on this land today.
From: Dan Galpern <dan.g...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 22, 2022 6:25 PM
To: Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com>
Wil-
I did not intend to malign the IPCC or UNFCCC. I claim that the framing, from many decades ago, did not take into consideration the dire circumstances we’re in now, where merely reducing our impact is tantamount to a suicide pact. That was not true in 1988.
Framing an issue is difficult, and needs to be revisited as circumstances advance.
Strong language (mine) may be required to shake us into rethinking…together.
Peter
From: Wil Burns <w...@feronia.org>
Date: Sunday, May 22, 2022 at 5:10 PM
To: Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com>
Cc: Dan Galpern <dan.g...@gmail.com>, Robert Tulip <rtuli...@yahoo.com.au>, Brent Fewell <brent....@earthandwatergroup.com>, Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>, ernie.e...@gmail.com <ernie.e...@gmail.com>, geoengineering <geoengi...@googlegroups.com>,
Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>, Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>, Russ George <russ....@gmail.com>, Alex Carlin <pyn...@hotmail.com>, Healthy Climate Alliance <healthy-clim...@googlegroups.com>,
Amos Eno <ae...@landcan.org>, McKie Campbell <mcam...@bwstrategies.com>, jku...@conservamerica.org <jku...@conservamerica.org>
Subject: RE: [CDR] Re: The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration
That’s an entirely different proposition than your original statement, which maligned the motivations of the IPCC, incorrectly, and referred to a non-existent charter. PLEASE don’t simply deflect, Peter.
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WIL BURNS Visiting Professor Environmental Policy & Culture Program Northwestern University
Email: william...@northwestern.edu Mobile: 312.550.3079
1808 Chicago Ave. #110 Evanston, IL 60208 https://epc.northwestern.edu/people/staff-new/wil-burns.html
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I acknowledge and honor the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa, as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk nations, upon whose traditional homelands Northwestern University stands, and the Indigenous people who remain on this land today.
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From: Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 22, 2022 7:04 PM
To: Wil Burns <w...@feronia.org>
See
table 2 from the paper, which if I converted correctly from mol C to tons CO2,
suggests just under one million tons "drawdown" of carbon not 150-200 million! I checked with one of the co-authors of the paper to confirm my math, so I've not seen any evidence of such a high CDR potential from that iron dump.
I'm the first to support open and transparent field studies of ocean iron for CDR to get at these carbon efficiencies, but before we claim we have the answer to our climate needs, we need to more careful about statements like this, and also consider the multiple intended and unintended ecological impacts that may or may not lead to durable C sequestration, much less salmon returns, etc.
The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration
A-list Washington insider on climate and environment policy, Earth & Water Group Founder, Brent Fewell, has over 25 years of experience in public policy, advocacy, and environmental law. He has just co-authored an article in the influential independent Washington policy newspaper The Hill with climate journalist Alex Carlin. Their conclusion is that “Congress would be wise to consider legislation to support Ocean Pasture Restoration (OPR). More fish in our ocean pastures and less carbon in the atmosphere would be a win-win for the environment and an increasingly hungry world.”
This article is massively important. Its clear analysis directly confronts the moral turpitude and intellectual incoherence of objections to geoengineering. Ocean Pasture Restoration is the method led by Russ George with the Haida Salmon Restoration Project in its successful 2012 fertilization which nearly quadrupled the pink salmon catch, with an economic rate of return over one hundred to one.
Fewell and Carlin say that based on this success, “one would have expected the world to rush to embrace OPR and George as a hero. But that didn’t happen, unjustly the opposite happened. George was maligned by many in the green movement who rejected OPR. But why? Because OPR offers a nature-based solution, removing carbon already in the atmosphere and repurposing it into new ocean life, rather than reducing carbon emissions. Many within the mainstream climate movement and radical environmentalists viewed OPR as a threat to their agenda of targeting and eliminating fossil fuels.”
Here we see the nub of the stupidity and cowardice that infests climate science and politics. The salmon catch chart linked above provides simple compelling evidence of the effectiveness of feeding salmon fingerlings before they die at sea. But somehow fisheries scientists are unable to even comment on the validity of this evidence. It appears they have been bullied into silence by the gross politicisation of climate change.
The “agenda of targeting and eliminating fossil fuels” is something continually invoked by its advocates as “of course the top priority”. But where is the evidence for this ritual assertion? There is none, outside partisan mythology. This alleged “top priority” can at best remove about 1% of radiative forcing per year, effectively nothing.
Reliance on decarbonisation leaves the world wide open to the massive risk of tipping points that could be prevented by investment in new technology. OPR presents a paradigm shift in climate politics, a way to cooperate with the fossil fuel industry and the capitalist system to secure sustained abundance and stability. That is exactly why greens oppose it.
The politics of climate made Russ George a convenient demon to justify the foolish assault on the world energy system at the core of IPCC thinking. Instead of tilting at windmills with the IPCC, serious analysts should take this article in The Hill as a starting point to change their views on climate priorities, creating the policy for major immediate investment in technologies such as OPR.
Bridging the political gap on climate policy requires recognition that the scientific world has gone down a wrong path in calling for an end to fossil fuel use. US Republicans will engage constructively once emission reduction is not the main climate agenda. Converting CO2 into biomass and other profitable commodities through technologies like OPR offers the vision of a way to fix the climate without attacking the world economy. Climate politics has to escape from its partisan tribal blockages. Ocean pasture technology is the type of game-changing breakthrough that is urgently needed. As The Hill article says, “OPR presents the opportunity of our lifetime to address climate change without bankrupting the U.S. economy and will give the U.S. time to transition to new cleaner sources of fuel in a more sensible timeframe and in a cost-effective manner.”
Robert Tulip
https://russgeorge.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Alaska_Salmon_Economics_Chart1-470x260.png
Thank you, Ken. I would hope that the drafters of the Hill paper will respond directly on this thread to this. This kind of sloppy math is of a piece. And discussions of risks, other than the proverbially cherry-picked “harmful algae blooms” are routinely ignored. wil
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WIL BURNS Visiting Professor Environmental Policy & Culture Program Northwestern University
Email: william...@northwestern.edu Mobile: 312.550.3079
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Thanks Greg and Ernie for these interesting responses. I also received a very positive comment from Victor Smetacek, leader of ocean iron fertilization scientific field testing in the Southern Ocean.
Greg, I don’t think your phrase “hope for the best” is an accurate characterisation of the Haida experimental method. It specifically targeted pink salmon at the critical stage of their two year life cycle in the ocean, at the time and place where they were most vulnerable to death from starvation. The quadrupling of pink salmon yield worth a billion dollars over four generations as clearly shown in the graph is hardly something that could be achieved without rigorous planning.
Please don’t just accept the malicious assertions of ideological critics of this project. Its amazing level of political status as a geoengineering talisman indicates the scope for distortion. Of course there is also risk of exaggeration of benefits, but the data in the graph from the Alaska authorities is independent and conclusive. What else could have caused such a major and valuable anomaly other than the Haida iron test?
And by the way, the extreme scandal of Canadian government theft of project data is still something that has not been widely understood or publicised. An underlying problem is the arrogance of the scientific community, with widespread acceptance of the word of ideologues, apparently due to the belief that only the academic guild has a right to conduct such tests. I hope the article in The Hill will cause some chastening and humility among those who accepted the condemnation of the Haida test.
Robert Tulip
From: geoengi...@googlegroups.com <geoengi...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Ernie Rogers
Sent: Monday, 16 May 2022 9:40 AM
To: gh...@sbcglobal.net
Cc: geoengi...@googlegroups.com; carbondiox...@googlegroups.com; Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; Robert Tulip <rtuli...@yahoo.com.au>; brent....@earthandwatergroup.com
Subject: Re: [geo] Re: [CDR] The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration
Okay, guys, let's dig into this graph and see what we can learn. Pink salmon are the fish we are talking about here. They have a two year cycle. I see on the graph that until the experiment, the production each year (odd and even years) is about the same. There are essentially two independent populations that don't breed with each other because they spawn on different cycles. The iron fertilization appears to have benefitted the one-year-old fish because they "exploded" on their spawning run one year later. We imagine that more fish reached the spawning beds that year, That means a better return of their offspring, and we see those increased offspring yielding a greater production two years later.
In my view, the iron fertilizing experiment was a clear success. It worked because at least in part iron availability was the limiting factor. Such was the case in those particular waters. I think I have read that iron fertilization has failed in other areas where some other nutrient was limiting, such as nitrogen and phosphorus. What we have here is a good first steip. Now, we know we can improve ocean health through "husbanding" of the ocean. I like that word better than farming --it allows that we can improve the natural environment while also producing more food for people.
Fertilization is an important aspect of helping nature to be more productive. Iron was a good place to start. However, about 80% of the world's surface waters are very low in nitrogen and phosphorus. There are many good books on chemical oceanography, one is a great short read by Wally Broeker. The books explain how nitrogen and phosphorus are depleted only in surface waters, the few hundred meters of water near the top. Wherever deep water is pushed to the surface by currents and wind. they bring dissolved nitrogen and phosphorus to the surface, and the health of the oceans increases tenfold. Those locations with natural upwelling produce most of the ocean fish.
Let's get on with the planning and execution of human interventions that have such profound effects on ocean health--AND they absorb CO2.
/Ernie Rogers
On Sun, May 15, 2022 at 1:19 PM Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Robert,
I'm all for repeating Russ's experiment, this time with actual measurments of net CDR and other effects. But without a solid understanding of what went on out there it is premature to give a green light to indescriminant, full scale IOF. For example, if IOF benefits the entire food chain, why did only pink salmon returns dramatically increase? How does one explain alternating high and averge to low returns in the odd and even years, respectively, following the OIF? What was the actual CDR achieved? There's a lot made of "restoration" of fisheries etc., but are the observed increases actually restoration or something way outside "natural" abundances? If iron is the controling factor of fish populations, then it would seem fish should already be at the top of their game since human activity has presumably increased iron (dust) delivery to the Pacific since pre-industrial times.
Am all for testing hypotheses with solid science protocols and measurements, and this is a worthy hypothesis. But let's not just add iron and hope for the best, as did Russ.
Greg
On Friday, May 13, 2022, 07:35:30 AM PDT, 'Robert Tulip' via Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration
A-list Washington insider on climate and environment policy, Earth & Water Group Founder, Brent Fewell, has over 25 years of experience in public policy, advocacy, and environmental law. He has just co-authored an article in the influential independent Washington policy newspaper The Hill with climate journalist Alex Carlin. Their conclusion is that “Congress would be wise to consider legislation to support Ocean Pasture Restoration (OPR). More fish in our ocean pastures and less carbon in the atmosphere would be a win-win for the environment and an increasingly hungry world.”
This article is massively important. Its clear analysis directly confronts the moral turpitude and intellectual incoherence of objections to geoengineering. Ocean Pasture Restoration is the method led by Russ George with the Haida Salmon Restoration Project in its successful 2012 fertilization which nearly quadrupled the pink salmon catch, with an economic rate of return over one hundred to one.
Fewell and Carlin say that based on this success, “one would have expected the world to rush to embrace OPR and George as a hero. But that didn’t happen, unjustly the opposite happened. George was maligned by many in the green movement who rejected OPR. But why? Because OPR offers a nature-based solution, removing carbon already in the atmosphere and repurposing it into new ocean life, rather than reducing carbon emissions. Many within the mainstream climate movement and radical environmentalists viewed OPR as a threat to their agenda of targeting and eliminating fossil fuels.”
Here we see the nub of the stupidity and cowardice that infests climate science and politics. The salmon catch chart linked above provides simple compelling evidence of the effectiveness of feeding salmon fingerlings before they die at sea. But somehow fisheries scientists are unable to even comment on the validity of this evidence. It appears they have been bullied into silence by the gross politicisation of climate change.
The “agenda of targeting and eliminating fossil fuels” is something continually invoked by its advocates as “of course the top priority”. But where is the evidence for this ritual assertion? There is none, outside partisan mythology. This alleged “top priority” can at best remove about 1% of radiative forcing per year, effectively nothing.
Reliance on decarbonisation leaves the world wide open to the massive risk of tipping points that could be prevented by investment in new technology. OPR presents a paradigm shift in climate politics, a way to cooperate with the fossil fuel industry and the capitalist system to secure sustained abundance and stability. That is exactly why greens oppose it.
The politics of climate made Russ George a convenient demon to justify the foolish assault on the world energy system at the core of IPCC thinking. Instead of tilting at windmills with the IPCC, serious analysts should take this article in The Hill as a starting point to change their views on climate priorities, creating the policy for major immediate investment in technologies such as OPR.
Bridging the political gap on climate policy requires recognition that the scientific world has gone down a wrong path in calling for an end to fossil fuel use. US Republicans will engage constructively once emission reduction is not the main climate agenda. Converting CO2 into biomass and other profitable commodities through technologies like OPR offers the vision of a way to fix the climate without attacking the world economy. Climate politics has to escape from its partisan tribal blockages. Ocean pasture technology is the type of game-changing breakthrough that is urgently needed. As The Hill article says, “OPR presents the opportunity of our lifetime to address climate change without bankrupting the U.S. economy and will give the U.S. time to transition to new cleaner sources of fuel in a more sensible timeframe and in a cost-effective manner.”
Robert Tulip
https://russgeorge.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Alaska_Salmon_Economics_Chart1-470x260.png
The climate solution that can also restore our seas
By Brent Fewell and Alex Carlin, Opinion Contributors – 10 May 2022
The National Academies of Sciences released a report in December 2021 assessing potential benefits of ocean-based carbon dioxide removal strategies and calling for more research to learn how these methods could help mitigate the impacts of climate change. Among the strategies recommended is ocean iron seeding or ocean pasture restoration (OPR).
The idea behind OPR has been around for decades. In 1993, John Martin, a top American oceanographer, proposed the first of a dozen experiments, adding miniscule amounts of iron to patches of the South Pacific Ocean stimulating the production of algae and ocean biomass. Martin had shown that many parts of our world’s oceans are starving for iron, lack of which suppresses ocean photosynthesis and its biological pump.
Just like agricultural pastures, “ocean pastures” need an array of nutrients for health and productivity. Algae, phytoplankton, is the base of aquatic food webs. It’s the primary food source for zooplankton, such as copepods and krill, which in turn are the primary food for whales, fish and seabirds.
Fast forward 20 years, an entrepreneur environmentalist, Russ George, embarked on the largest ocean iron project to date 200 miles off the coast of Alaska and Canada. Supported by Canadian native, provincial and federal governments they dusted an ocean area 60×60 miles with just 100 tons of iron rich dust in the Gulf of Alaska. The goal was to restore the regional salmon fisheries. And, indeed, it did.
Within days, the ocean was teeming with life. Whales, dolphin, tuna, salmon and seabirds feasted on restored plankton blooms. Satellite imagery revealed the bloom grew to be roughly the size of the state of Virginia. The pasture captured 150-200 million tons of CO2 in the form of billions of tons of new ocean plankton — fish food. It sequestered 15 million to 20 million tons of CO2 miles down in the deep abyss. The following year Alaska’s pink salmon witnessed historic catches, four times those forecasted, delivering hundreds of millions of dollars (in USD) into the state’s economy. It cost under $5 million.
The Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation project was a resounding success. One would have expected the world to rush to embrace OPR and George as a hero. But that didn’t happen, unjustly the opposite happened. George was maligned by many in the green movement who rejected OPR.
But why? Because OPR offers a nature-based solution, removing carbon already in the atmosphere and repurposing it into new ocean life, rather than reducing carbon emissions. Many within the mainstream climate movement and radical environmentalists viewed OPR as a threat to their agenda of targeting and eliminating fossil fuels.
The National Academies of Science report confirms the legality of the work and potential in OPR. However, parts of the report may perpetuate misinformation and fallacies often advanced by OPR opponents. For example, the report implies that OPR might create unintended harmful algal blooms. It appears to wrongly state that there was no link to enhanced salmon returns in the Haida project, despite Alaska harvesting the largest salmon catch in history in 2013.
The Chesapeake Bay and Gulf of Mexico have taught us that too much algae in the wrong ocean location can be harmful, but OPR is only possible hundreds of miles offshore in the deepest regions of the ocean where iron is extremely limited, and no record of hazardous algal blooms exist.
Experts estimate climate change could cost the U.S. $2 trillion per year over the next 50 years due to fires, flood and drought.
OPR presents the opportunity of our lifetime to address climate change without bankrupting the U.S. economy and will give the U.S. time to transition to new cleaner sources of fuel in a more sensible timeframe and in a cost-effective manner.
OPR may also provide solutions to endangered species, such as Right Whales. New federal rules to reduce whale entanglements endanger Maine’s $1.4 billion lobster industry. Growing evidence suggests that ship-whale collisions may be the biggest threat to the whales’ survival rather than lobster trap entanglement. Right Whales, like most marine mammals, migrate to ocean pastures with plentiful food. George’s proposed OPR projects in New England would attract whales away from major shipping channels and lobster grounds, thereby protecting whales and commercial fishing, while quickly bringing back Atlantic Salmon to historic abundance.
Congress would be wise to consider legislation to support OPR. More fish in our ocean pastures and less carbon in the atmosphere would be a win-win for the environment and an increasingly hungry world.
Brent Fewell is the former deputy assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Water and founder of Earth & Water Law.
Alex Carlin is a foreign correspondent for environment, specializing in climate, for the Center for Media and Democracy. He has blogged from every United Nation Climate Conference since 2014.
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Environment Canada indicated that OIF wasn’t permitted in Canadian waters, and yet you chose to proceed anyway. You also, circumspectly, suggest that there was a “reason” you decided to proceed anyway, but won’t reveal it here. Gee, I wonder why some NGOs and governments are resistant to marine-based CDR on the grounds that they’re afraid of “rogue actors?”
Your boss, Russ George, stated that the London Convention and CBD resolutions were “mythology.”
George is the former chief executive of Planktos Inc, whose previous failed efforts to conduct large-scale commercial dumps near the Galapagos and Canary Islands led to his vessels being barred from ports by the
Spanish and Ecuadorean governments. The US Environmental Protection Agency warned him that flying a US flag for his Galapagos project would violate US laws, and his activities are credited in part to the passing of international moratoria at the United Nations
limiting ocean fertilization experiments. Canada is assuredly not a “banana republic,” but you were seeking to operate as such in terms of your operations.
What we need for future experiments is assuredly solid scientists, but not in conjunction with “a great PR plan,” but rather, a commitment to the rule of law.
wil
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WIL BURNS Visiting Professor Environmental Policy & Culture Program Northwestern University
Email: william...@northwestern.edu Mobile: 312.550.3079
1808 Chicago Ave. #110 Evanston, IL 60208 |
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From:
carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of Jason McNamee
Sent: Thursday, October 6, 2022 4:59 PM
To: Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>
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Thanks very much Jason. I relied on my understanding of information published by Russ George on his blog, and the article by Brent Fewell in The Hill.
Very interesting to see your comments.
Robert Tulip
From: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Jason McNamee
Sent: Friday, 7 October 2022 8:59 AM
To: Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>
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Yes, I agree. I support research on an array of marine options. And it needs to be emphasized that the resolutions passed by the CBD and London Convention, in response to George’s earlier shenanigans, did not establish unreasonable strictures in terms of OIF research. They sought to limit the enterprise to small-scale scientific research, subject to a risk assessment framework in the case of the London Convention that the parties established in 2010. The components of this assessment are nothing that I think any of us would find unreasonable. The Convention also now has a working group looking at how to potentially regulate other ocean-based CDR approaches. There’s really no reason to thumb one’s nose at these requirements, nor the contents of the amendment to the London Protocol. George, per usual, simply decided to flip the international community the bird, potentially begetting a backlash against the good efforts of other more responsible researchers. The Fewell piece in the Hill was similarly inflammatory for no good reason, and distorted international law and the science in this field. We have discussed this on the list already, so won’t repeat the criticisms of that piece here. wil
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WIL BURNS Visiting Professor Environmental Policy & Culture Program Northwestern University
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From: Brian Cady <brianc...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, October 7, 2022 6:31 PM
To: Wil Burns <w...@feronia.org>
Cc: Carbon Dioxide Removal Group (CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com) <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [CDR] Re: The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration
Thank you, Wil Burns, for the succinct summation of what happened, what was done that was wrong and what needs to be done on iron fertilization science and law. I hadn't realized that the Canadian Gov't. said 'Don't do it'. I agree that research should abide by international law. International law should permit small well-studied, thoughtful experiments, so we humans can learn whether iron fertilization will release methane or nitrous oxide or other greenhouse gases, or fix much carbon as sealife, as is hoped.
Brian
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Dear Jason,
A couple of issues with your portrayal of the Haida experiment:
wil
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Email: william...@northwestern.edu Mobile: 312.550.3079
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Dear Jason,
Let me tell you how many Haida officials have indicated that they felt lied to and hoodwinked by Russ in terms of the nature of this project, so it’s indulging a bit of a fiction to call this a Haida project. Also, in point of fact, it also wasn’t authorized by the Council of the Haida Nation, which opposed the experiment; the village of Old Massett should have obtained permission from the Council. Finally, and most importantly, while the Haida certainly have treaty rights vis-à-vis the Canadian government, one thing they do NOT have is the right to control Canadian foreign policy, including treaty obligations. The project should have been vetted via the LP’s risk assessment process, which you don’t deny provides a good independent process for vetting proposals. This was the Canadian government’s position also, after consulting with its legal counsel.
Again, one of the reasons that so many governments and NGOs have expressed trepidation about ocean-based CDR experiments is because folks like you want to claim that you’re subject to no legal regulation, or even elemental scrutiny of your projects. It’s a prescription for disaster. I’ll stop banging this pot with this message.
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Thanks Wil
It’s helpful to know all this background information.
Clive
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Here are 2012 comments from Haida representatives. I would appreciate explanation of why these comments are not to be trusted.
From https://www.ecoshock.org/transcripts/HSRC_Rea_Disney_Transcript.html
Statements made by the Village of Old Massett Chief Ken Rea, followed by the President of the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation, John Disney.
Ken Rea:
Thank you for attending our press conference at the Vancouver aquarium. I am the elected Chief Councilor for the Village of Old Massett. I am the lead spokesperson for our community. And I am the principal for this initiative. [The Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation]
It has been quite an experience this week. It is clear that this has generated a great deal of attention both locally, nationally, and everywhere.
I want to tell you a story in my own words. I am a leader, a businessman, a fisherman, and a father, and a steward of our oceans. And I take these roles very seriously.
We live in Old Massett and live on the ocean for generations. We are stewards of the land, and always taken a strong leadership position, when it's coming to resource management and sustainable development. This is nothing new, and we have been here for generations and we want to ensure a healthy ocean for future generations.
In recent years something has changed in our oceans. The salmon are gone and this has created many problems and has affected my people's and the village's future. Unemployment in our village is over 70% and economic opportunities are limited.
The Village Council, it was clear that we needed to take action to bring back the salmon which are so critically important to our people. Our oceans and the salmon that it produced in the past has employed many in the fishery. That is no longer the case.
This has led to create the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation. This is owned by our village. (1) This is a Haida company that was tasked with helping examine our oceans and restore salmon to be used by our people for food, ceremonial, and commercial purposes.
The creation of this company and this project was consulted widely and discussed by many people in the community. It was not a decision taken lightly. We have an obligation to steward our scarce financial resources.
We undertook the step of restoring the salmon in the ocean. We developed the company and the team to undertake this work. You'll hear much more from John Disney about the actual work that summer that utilized the research vessel the Ocean Perl (2) and a variety of the latest technology.
We did our due diligence. We looked at the science, the legalities, the practicalities. We consulted and then we implemented.
Iron in the ocean is a natural thing. It is not pollution as some of the recent press has indicated. We went into the high seas to do this project because that's where the fish are. We are at international waters where the Law of the Sea Convention governed. We undertook our work, in the open ocean, and collecting baseline data, more marine life was observed.
We .. As we collected data we took steps, restoration. It wasn't long before we saw the results of the seabirds, whales, and fish. We collected all the data. When the Ocean Pearl returned to the dock, there is much work to be done. We need to analyze this data, and we continue to do that in accordance with normal scientific practice.
Under the Law of the Sea Convention we have an obligation to undertake scientific research (3) as a village, and as well, share the data.
We want to protect the ocean. We want to create a sustainable economy. We want to provide answers and we want to help provide solutions. It may be the ocean carbon credits may be the way to do that. Only the data would tell. (4) The success of our project will be measured when the salmon return to our waters. (5) We believe in this project. We want to share this project and our finding with the broader community.
It is our hope that our investment is the right one for this community. On a changing planet we need to take bold steps.
The people of the Village of Old Massett believe that we have taken the right step. Time will tell.
How... for honoring our invitation. And thank you for listening.
====================
Joe Spears: (6) I'd like to call on Mr. John Disney, the President of the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation.
John Disney:
Thank you for all coming out to this conference here this morning. Our project has generated a great deal of media attention both locally, nationally, and internationally. (7)
I want to tell you about the project - what we did, and how we did it. This project was not entered into lightly. And we have complied with all the necessary aspects of ocean governance before undertaking the work.
What I want to make very clear is that we do not consider micronutrient replenishment of a naturally occurring substance to be pollution. (8) We are using this for restoration purposes to restore the salmon back to their rightful place in the Old Massett economy.
We have created a great team, working to develop the knowledge that will allow us to have a sustainable future, and that is a guiding principle of the company.
As President, I am very cognizant of all the requirements of the scientific and legal nature that applies to this project. (9)
I'd like to say at this time, that the international media and national media seems to have focus on Russ George who we brought in as our Chief Scientist. (10) I want to make this emphatically clear: Russ George did not, I say did not, come to us to dupe us, or sell us a bill of goods. We approached him, and we based that on ten years of work with him in other fields. (11) I've known Russ for over ten years and I'll tell you something that is very rare. I've never.. he's never once lied to me. He's only told me the truth. He has a great integrity, (12) and he's never let us down.
And every time he's told me something that I thought was unbelievable, (13) I've checked it out and he's always been right. (14) And I challenge anyone else in the corporate world to come up with that about a person. Russ has one aim in life: he wants to try and make the planet a better place. That's it. I don't care what else you read. (15)
The full highlights of the process are set out in the backgrounder to the Haida Salmon Restoration Project (16). But I want to take you to a couple of ... points. We sought the best scientific method to ensure that our efforts and investment of more than two million dollars would pay dividends in the future. (17) We sought to use the very latest cutting edge of marine technology to make this a reality. (18)
We used local people wherever possible. (19) We consulted widely to a global scale and we undertook all our due diligence. (20) The Salmon Enhancement Pilot Research Project, also known as the Ocean Restoration, or Ocean Micronutrient Replenishment, was for study conditions of the ocean offshore west of Haida Gwaii, which we understood and believe (21) act as a pasture for juvenile salmon.
We wanted to examine this with a particular emphasis on the collapse of plankton biomass (22) that traditionally provides nutrients to salmon and other marine life.
The goal of our project was to restore the growth of phytoplankton, therefore sustaining and enhancing marine life. What is well documented in literature is the amount of iron dust entering the oceans has decreased over time. (23) We thought there was a link between a recent volcanic eruption and an increase in returning salmon that was in... It was caused by an introduction of iron dust into the marine ecosystem of the Gulf of Alaska.
One of our goals was to see if we could make that connection. In 2010 instead of the less than 1 million salmon returning to the Fraser River (24) there were 40 million.
We had planned to release the information from our research after the Cohen Report that was set up by the Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans to examine the collapse of salmon stock. However, the recent article in the British Guardian [newspaper] and the resulting flurry of media attention put the spotlight on this project. And so we thought it best if we put some of the factual story, an amazing story (25) out to you so you could learn firsthand at what we found.
The important thing to remember is that this story is ongoing. Pictures tell a thousand words and we have many many pictures, and thousands of words to tell.
And what we found was that when we added iron into the ocean there was an almost immediate observable impact on marine life, such as whales and other sea mammals, sea birds, pelagic fish. And this could all be observed immediately from the research vessel. This is encouraging. But until we analyze the data we will not know the full results of our efforts. (26)
In you media package we have both photos and information of our data collection techniques. We sought to use the latest in technology, using a solid approved methodology (27) for collecting both the baseline data (28) and to measure the potential increase in marine phytoplankton production.
We have collected an amazing amount of data (29) , in an area where there has been very little oceanographic research. The gyre where this work was undertaken appears to be very stable.
Our next steps are the ongoing work to analyze the data. (30) The ultimate proof will be in the return of sockeye salmon to our watersheds in two thousand and fourteen and subsequent years. (31)
As our background[er] indicates we are going to release some of this data for independent third party analysis. (32) We also want to create a dialog around this issue. (33)
I also want to make it clear that the work was performed in international waters, is lawful, and we sought legal advice from experienced maritime counsel, who worked in this area, for many years before acting.
We have every intention of cooperating with Canadian government officials (34) and it has always been our position to comply with Canadian law even when operating in international waters. In fact, up to seven Federal Ministries know about, or have been involved to some extent in this project. (35)
Our company is very hopeful that the salmon will return and we may be able to measure carbon credits, may be able to fund future restoration work. (36) It might be hard for some of you to comprehend that a small First Nations community consisting of a few hundred people could undertake such a project. But I'll tell you that this isn't a single stand-alone project.
Old Massett has been observing the environment around them and been concerned about what they see and taken several steps in recent years. We have a state-of-the-art wastewater treatment plant, so our sewage is non-threatening to the surrounding environment. We've addressed the issue of throwing offal from our processing plants, and now it is sold to local farmers who compost it, grow chickens and cows, from which we then buy that meat.
We're embarking on an alternative energy plan to get off diesel generation. In fact we're about to respond to our B.C. Hydro request for interest in proposals that's coming out next month.
And we've set up one of the only radiation monitoring systems on a twenty four hour basis in the Northwest corner of B.C.
So this isn't a new area that we've entered. We are familiar with the routines and the rigor around doing scientific work. (37)
Thank you for coming here today.
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It’s not going to happen. The “data is freely available” claim is also a canard. And Russ is peddling the snake oil to other tribes at this point.
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WIL BURNS Visiting Professor Environmental Policy & Culture Program Northwestern University
Email: william...@northwestern.edu Mobile: 312.550.3079
1808 Chicago Ave. #110 Evanston, IL 60208 Wil Burns – Faculty Website (northwestern.edu)
Want to schedule a call? Click on one of the following scheduling links:
I acknowledge and honor the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa, as well as the Menominee, Miami, and Ho-Chunk nations, upon whose traditional homelands Northwestern University stands, and the Indigenous people who remain on this land today.
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From: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of Ken Buesseler
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2022 8:01 PM
To: Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [CDR] Re: The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration
sign me up Michael for getting such a paper, maybe with Salmon Fisheries co-authors to explain the Alaska wide Pink Salmon catch data and how the event off Haida Gwaii could be responsible. Any why they are making the case, someone should release those data disks as well.
What happened in this October that changed anyone's opinions since May?
Ken Buesseler
On Saturday, October 8, 2022 at 7:08:06 PM UTC-4 electro...@gmail.com wrote:
Jason, you have made associated unsupported claims concerning radical short-term effects on the salmon run, or the trophodynamics result of what you did. The above claim that you made no claim is itself questionable.
I recommend that you provided undisputable scientific support for the trophodynamics claim concerning the radical improvement in the salmon return numbers due to your efforts or publicly retract the trophodynamics claim.
Here is the appropriate expert group that you need to convince that your trophodynamics claims are supportable:
The nature-based CDR implications of increasing salmon stocks, their reproduction rates, would seem to make for a breakthrough peer reviewed paper on artifical stimulation of the trophodynamics surrounding OIF. I would look forward to reading such a paper for numerous reasons.
Michael
On Sat, Oct 8, 2022, 2:57 PM Wil Burns <w...@feronia.org> wrote:
Dear Jason,
Let me tell you how many Haida officials have indicated that they felt lied to and hoodwinked by Russ in terms of the nature of this project, so it’s indulging a bit of a fiction to call this a Haida project. Also, in point of fact, it also wasn’t authorized by the Council of the Haida Nation, which opposed the experiment; the village of Old Massett should have obtained permission from the Council. Finally, and most importantly, while the Haida certainly have treaty rights vis-à-vis the Canadian government, one thing they do NOT have is the right to control Canadian foreign policy, including treaty obligations. The project should have been vetted via the LP’s risk assessment process, which you don’t deny provides a good independent process for vetting proposals. This was the Canadian government’s position also, after consulting with its legal counsel.
Again, one of the reasons that so many governments and NGOs have expressed trepidation about ocean-based CDR experiments is because folks like you want to claim that you’re subject to no legal regulation, or even elemental scrutiny of your projects. It’s a prescription for disaster. I’ll stop banging this pot with this message.
wil
WIL BURNS
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Jason McNamee
Jason McNamee
Marine heat waves could wipe out fish stocks, UBC study finds
The answer to marine heat is surface cooling.
From: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Michael Hayes
Sent: October 12, 2022 3:34 PM
To: Jason McNamee <jasont...@gmail.com>
Cc: Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [CDR] Re: The Hill article on Ocean Pasture Restoration
Jason, I agree that the Pacific Salmon Foundation is likely the best group to make any claims about Pacific salmon and the effects of what you did. I've invited the PSF to comment:
The natural CDR potential of seagrass pastures is large and, if they can be helped with minimal input, they should be helped. The link between biodiversity and nature-based adaptation measures can be strong:
However, importing nutrients into an already over nutrified shallow water seagrass pasture should be, IMO, best viewed via a criminal jurisprudence lens not a scientific lens as there was no peer reviewed 'science' product generated by you....even after a decade of sitting upon the 'data' and sample jars(???). Industrial scale chumming even with iron/microalgae is still industrial scale chumming, not science.
On Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 12:58 PM Jason McNamee <jasont...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Michael,
I have never made such unsupported claims re: fishery. However, we did do an Ecopath (https://ecopath.org/) simulation which showed there was a possibility that the pink salmon fishery could have been supported by the OIF project. This document is not public but we could share with appropriate individuals.
I think PSF is the appropriate group to consider if you want to make a donation for tax purposes. If you want to know about salmon trophodynamics in BC I think you would want to talk to the folks at UBC Oceans or the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney.
Jason McNamee
On Sat, 8 Oct 2022 at 16:08, Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com> wrote:
Jason, you have made associated unsupported claims concerning radical short-term effects on the salmon run, or the trophodynamics result of what you did. The above claim that you made no claim is itself questionable.
I recommend that you provided undisputable scientific support for the trophodynamics claim concerning the radical improvement in the salmon return numbers due to your efforts or publicly retract the trophodynamics claim.
Here is the appropriate expert group that you need to convince that your trophodynamics claims are supportable:
The nature-based CDR implications of increasing salmon stocks, their reproduction rates, would seem to make for a breakthrough peer reviewed paper on artifical stimulation of the trophodynamics surrounding OIF. I would look forward to reading such a paper for numerous reasons.
Michael
On Sat, Oct 8, 2022, 2:57 PM Wil Burns <w...@feronia.org> wrote:
Dear Jason,
Let me tell you how many Haida officials have indicated that they felt lied to and hoodwinked by Russ in terms of the nature of this project, so it’s indulging a bit of a fiction to call this a Haida project. Also, in point of fact, it also wasn’t authorized by the Council of the Haida Nation, which opposed the experiment; the village of Old Massett should have obtained permission from the Council. Finally, and most importantly, while the Haida certainly have treaty rights vis-à-vis the Canadian government, one thing they do NOT have is the right to control Canadian foreign policy, including treaty obligations. The project should have been vetted via the LP’s risk assessment process, which you don’t deny provides a good independent process for vetting proposals. This was the Canadian government’s position also, after consulting with its legal counsel.
Again, one of the reasons that so many governments and NGOs have expressed trepidation about ocean-based CDR experiments is because folks like you want to claim that you’re subject to no legal regulation, or even elemental scrutiny of your projects. It’s a prescription for disaster. I’ll stop banging this pot with this message.
wil
WIL BURNS
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