Is ocean DOC secure?

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Greg Rau

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Aug 9, 2018, 2:58:45 PM8/9/18
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"From undulating surface to inky black depths, Earth’s oceans are littered with the carcasses of tiny life-forms called phytoplankton that in life form the basis of the marine food chain.

These microscopic ghosts contain a reservoir of carbon estimated at a staggering 662 gigatons—200 times greater than the amount stored in all living plants and animals—that could come back to haunt us if unleashed from its watery grave as planet-warming carbon dioxide.

Some of the carbon-containing molecules in these plankton remnants will remain locked away for millions of years on the seafloor, but some will break down and enter the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. A huge portion will continue to circulate freely in the ocean for generations. But exactly which molecules are destined for which fate—and therefore how much of this vast carbon pool is headed for the atmosphere via ocean warming, acidification, sunlight or digestion by microbes—is an outstanding question. Answering it requires a clearer picture of the structure of the molecules that contain this carbon. An international team of scientists has now taken the first “photographs” of these molecules in an effort to start parsing that out. This first glimpse suggests that while a catastrophic breakdown and release of carbon seems unlikely, there is much left to understand about the behavior of oceanic carbon."

GR - Some inexcusable errors here.  Carcasses of phytoplankton do not constitute 662 Gt C, but rather dissolved organic carbon (DOC) derived from biomass (mostly marine) constitute some 700 Gt C in the ocean (IPCC 2013, Fig. 6.1). Living marine biomass is only 3 Gt. Meantime, living biomass on land is some 500 Gt C. So no way is DOC "200 times greater than the [C] amount stored in all living plants and animals". Nevertheless, we indeed need to make sure that the DOC doesn't "come back to haunt us" such as if climate change accelerates DOC respiration.  For further perspective, the ocean contains 38,000 Gt C in dissolved inorganic form, dwarfing any other reservoir in contact with the atmosphere (850 Gt C). I.e it's pretty clear where nature likes to store C; shall we follow her lead or try to do something different?

Thomas Goreau

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Aug 9, 2018, 3:20:23 PM8/9/18
to Greg Rau, Carbon Dioxide Removal, edi...@sciam.com, alysha....@geo.uzh.ch, l...@zurich.ibm.com, Soil Age
Unfortunately these errors are all too typical of the sort of nonsense about marine carbon widely propagated in the popular press.

Terrrestrial biomass is around 200 times greater than ocean biomass.

Dissolved organic carbon is very resistant to decomposition, it is composed of residues inedible to bacteria that lasts for thousands of years but forms slowly. 

Most terrestrial biomass is soil carbon with lifetimes of centuries to millennia, and woody tree trunks with lifetime of decades to centuries, but most ocean biomass dies, rots, or is eaten and returned to the atmosphere as CO2 in just days.

All this stuff recently posted about growing marine biomass as a carbon sink is literally pie in the sky, you just can’t grow it fast enough and keep it from recycling to make the difference needed to atmospheric CO2.

Soil carbon enhancement is the only likely way to cost-effectively store carbon and bank it to increase positive future benefits in soil fertility and food production.

On the other hand most CDR proposals are far more costly, and by removing CO2 and blocking the natural recycling of carbon, are just running down the future capacity of the biosphere to safely regulate global atmospheric composition, temperatures, water supplies, and food, our planetary life support systems.

Soil carbon enhancement could draw down the dangerous excess CO2 to safe levels in decades if we used state of the art carbon farming methods, but unfortunately only a few people are now doing so. 

The solutions to runaway global warming lie in the soil and terrestrial vegetation, not the oceans.

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Coordinator, Soil Carbon Alliance
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734


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Wil Burns

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Aug 9, 2018, 3:28:31 PM8/9/18
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Dear Thomas. Could we chat on the phone about a workshop idea I have? Wil

From: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Thomas Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 9, 2018 12:20:19 PM
To: Greg Rau
Cc: Carbon Dioxide Removal; edi...@sciam.com; alysha....@geo.uzh.ch; l...@zurich.ibm.com; Soil Age
Subject: [CDR] Ocean carbon versus land carbon sequestration
 

Thomas Goreau

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Aug 9, 2018, 3:40:27 PM8/9/18
to Wil Burns, Soil Age, Carbon Dioxide Removal
Dear Wil,

We have written numerous papers and books, and spoken about this at conferences, for more than 30 years. 

There is a large global network of people of people working on this, but those of us working on naturally sound solutions are not involved with the geo-engineering groups, because we think their efforts are misplaced, although they seem to get all the publicity.

I’d be glad to talk to you but I’m right now in Maui designing coral reef and beach regeneration projects and don’t carry a phone.

Skype can work, but I’m heading soon to give an invited keynote talk on sustainable whole-ecosystem mariculture (and new far more cost effective methods of coastal wetland carbon sequestration) at the Amsterdam Aquaculture conference. 

Should be in Cambridge briefly after the 16th and suggest we talk then.

Best wishes,
Tom

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Coordinator, Soil Carbon Alliance
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

Greg Rau

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Aug 9, 2018, 4:17:53 PM8/9/18
to Thomas Goreau, Wil Burns, Soil Age, Carbon Dioxide Removal
Guys, unless CDR audience relevant, please take you private discussion offline of CDR.
Thanks,
Greg


From: Thomas Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
To: Wil Burns <w...@feronia.org>
Cc: Soil Age <soil...@googlegroups.com>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 9, 2018 12:40 PM
Subject: Re: [CDR] Ocean carbon versus land carbon sequestration

Greg Rau

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Aug 9, 2018, 4:57:23 PM8/9/18
to Alysha Coppola, Carbon Dioxide Removal
Alysha in not a member of CDR so I'm forwarding her response to the CDR list.
Greg


From: Alysha Coppola <alysha....@geo.uzh.ch>
To: Thomas Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
Cc: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>; "edi...@sciam.com" <edi...@sciam.com>; "l...@zurich.ibm.com" <l...@zurich.ibm.com>; Soil Age <soil...@googlegroups.com>; Chris Sciacca <c...@zurich.ibm.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 9, 2018 12:32 PM
Subject: Re: Ocean carbon versus land carbon sequestration

Hi All,

I agree there are some errors, but we did not see a proof before it when out.  Our paper wasn’t about decomposition of DOC with warmer temperatures, but about visualizing these compounds to give clues about it’s persistence in the ocean.  

Yes, I agree it should be specified that we’re talking about the dissolved organic carbon pool.  These “carcasses (i.e. dead) of phytoplankton” should be explicitly stated as dissolved organic carbon, which forms the majority of phytoplankton/living biomass forms the DOC pool.  But we’re talking about the same thing here.   This is to have a catchy title for the general audience.

The 662 Gt is from Hansel et al., 2009 paper. And the 200 times is from this paper as well-holding greater than 200x the carbon inventory of marine biomass. This is an error. 

I agree- and as I was quoted in the article- this carbon is ancient, and from our paper it shows that the structure might explain it’s recalcitrance in the deep ocean.  With increasing temperatures, we may reimeralize some of this DOC- but not this old carbon in the deep. The temperature change hasn’t reached past 1000m, and this most recent study only found a 7 Gt decrease from temperatures of 1oC warming in labile and semi-labile pools.The labile and semi-labile pools are a small percentage of the total DOC, which is mostly refractory according to Hansell’s definition. 

And I agree- there’s that 4 per mil initiative to store carbon in soils. 

Thomas Goreau

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Aug 9, 2018, 5:06:01 PM8/9/18
to Greg Rau, Alysha Coppola, Carbon Dioxide Removal, Soil Age
It is unfortunate that the press almost always gets the scientific details wrong and does not check their “facts” with the authors, who would immediately find the embarrassing mistakes made by journalists that their colleagues will blame them for later. 

In this case the real point of the paper, not made in the press article, is that global warming would be expected to increase the rate of decomposition of dissolved organic carbon in the ocean, and therefore act as a positive feedback mechanism accelerating CO2 increase and global warming, just like the increasing rate of microbial decomposition of soil organic carbon (another large pool with long lifetimes).

Reversing both these trends is key to stabilizing CO2 at safe levels, much more so than costly geo-engineering with unknown efficiency and side effects, which are mostly temporary band aids to hide the symptoms rather than really sustainably solve the problem!

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Coordinator, Soil Carbon Alliance
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

Thomas Goreau

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Aug 9, 2018, 5:38:29 PM8/9/18
to Greg Rau, Alysha Coppola, Carbon Dioxide Removal, Soil Age
To avoid more confusion, there are in fact two different papers being referred to. Each reveals different important aspects of marine organic carbon storage.

The first focuses on the potential positive feedback from dissolved ocean organic carbon with temperature enhanced decomposition in surface waters.

The second paper is on the physical structure of deep dissolved organic carbon, which finds that the material in the deep sea is largely black carbon, very old and highly resistant to decomposition, and so might be less affected by global warming in surface water. Black carbon is very similar in composition to biochar and is largely derived in significant part from erosion by water and wind of biochar residues in soils from ancient forest fires.

Titles and abstracts of both papers are below.


ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Front. Mar. Sci., 12 January 2018 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2017.00436

Large Stimulation of Recalcitrant Dissolved Organic Carbon Degradation by Increasing Ocean Temperatures


Abstract:
More than 96% of organic carbon in the ocean is in the dissolved form, most of it with lifetimes of decades to millennia. Yet, we know very little about the temperature sensitivity of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) degradation in a warming ocean. Combining independent estimates from laboratory experiments, oceanographic cruises and a global ocean DOC cycling model, we assess the relationship between DOC decay constants and seawater temperatures. Our results show that the apparent activation energy of DOC decay (Ea) increases by three-fold from the labile (lifetime of days) and semi-labile (lifetime of months) to the semi-refractory (lifetime of decades) DOC pools, with only minor differences between the world's largest ocean basins. This translates into increasing temperature coefficients (Q10) from 1.7–1.8 to 4–8, showing that the generalized assumption of a constant Q10 of ~2 for biological rates is not universally applicable for the microbial degradation of DOC in the ocean. Therefore, rising ocean temperatures will preferentially impact the microbial degradation of the more recalcitrant and larger of the three studied pools. Assuming a uniform 1°C warming scenario throughout the ocean, our model predicts a global decrease of the DOC reservoir by 7 ± 1 Pg C. This represents a 15% reduction of the semi-labile + semi-refractory DOC pools.




Cycling of black carbon in the ocean

Geophysical Research LettersVolume 43, Issue 9First published: 11 April 2016Black carbon (BC) is a by‐product of combustion from wildfires and fossil fuels and is a slow‐cycling component of the carbon cycle. Whether BC accumulates and ages on millennial time scales in the world oceans has remained unknown. Here we quantified dissolved BC (DBC) in marine dissolved organic carbon isolated by solid phase extraction at several sites in the world ocean. We find that DBC in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic oceans ranges from 1.4 to 2.6 μM in the surface and is 1.2 ± 0.1 μM in the deep Atlantic. The average 14C age of surface DBC is 4800 ± 620 14C years and much older in a deep water sample (23,000 ± 3000 14C years). The range of DBC structures and 14C ages indicates that DBC is not homogeneous in the ocean. We show that there are at least two distinct pools of marine DBC, a younger pool that cycles on centennial time scales and an ancient pool that cycles on >105 year time scales.

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Coordinator, Soil Carbon Alliance
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

Margaret Torn

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Aug 9, 2018, 8:03:20 PM8/9/18
to Greg Rau, Alysha Coppola, Carbon Dioxide Removal
I will chime in with two more cents, about soil C and DOC, just to clarify something:

Thomas G wrote that "Dissolved organic carbon is very resistant to decomposition, it is composed of residues inedible to bacteria that lasts for thousands of years but forms slowly."  Was this for soil DOC or ocean? For soil, this kind of generalization is not meaningful. DOC can be a large range of compounds. If you have to generalize, it is more generally  the case DOC is the pool of soil that turns over most quickly, on order of hours - weeks. Once soil OC is sorbed to minerals or protected in aggregates, it may persist for centuries to millennia as he wrote.

The question about marine biomass is not whether most of it turns over quickly. The way you would get a sink is if some fraction sinks to deeper water where it tends to persist--and if that fraction is large enough to create a large sink. I'm not saying it will sink and I'm not advocating that approach.  I just wanted to point out that the fact that most near-surface ocean OC turns over quickly is not sufficient grounds for saying it won't work.

Thanks


On Thu, Aug 9, 2018 at 1:57 PM, Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Alysha in not a member of CDR so I'm forwarding her response to the CDR list.
Greg


From: Alysha Coppola <alysha....@geo.uzh.ch>
To: Thomas Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
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Thomas Goreau

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Aug 9, 2018, 8:07:12 PM8/9/18
to Margaret Torn, Greg Rau, Alysha Coppola, Carbon Dioxide Removal, Soil Age
A large part of the highly resistant fine black carbon in the deep sea is derived from water or wind erosion of biochar in soil produced (very inefficiently) by forest fires that ends up in the deep sea.

The rest is from polymerization of marine organic matter, but this much less rich in lignin and aromatic organic carbon that is the precursor to biochar.

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Coordinator, Soil Carbon Alliance
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

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Greg Rau

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Aug 9, 2018, 8:07:31 PM8/9/18
to Thomas Goreau, Alysha Coppola, Carbon Dioxide Removal, Soil Age
Important references, Thomas, but the paper actually cited the SA article is this one: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2018GL077457

Greg

From: Thomas Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
To: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>
Cc: Alysha Coppola <alysha....@geo.uzh.ch>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>; Soil Age <soil...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 9, 2018 2:38 PM
Subject: Re: [CDR] Re: Ocean carbon versus land carbon sequestration

Thomas Goreau

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Aug 9, 2018, 11:38:28 PM8/9/18
to Soil Age, Wil Burns, Carbon Dioxide Removal
I have not had a car for at least 10 years. My projects restoring coral reefs and beaches around the world are too far to swim to.

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Coordinator, Soil Carbon Alliance
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734


On Aug 9, 2018, at 5:12 PM, Denise Ward <denis...@gmail.com> wrote:

You know this is kinda funny - you're traveling across the world using fossil fuels????  This IS a BIG  problem. I hope you don't also drive an SUV? Where is our morality if we believe we are poisoning our planet and we continue to do these things? Especially now when we have skype and remote meeting technolgies. What kind of mentors are we if even environmentalists use fossil fuel like a Republican?

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Robert Tulip

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Aug 10, 2018, 9:26:10 AM8/10/18
to Thomas Goreau, Greg Rau, Carbon Dioxide Removal, edi...@sciam.com, alysha....@geo.uzh.ch, l...@zurich.ibm.com, Soil Age
Dear Thomas, 
 
Your claim that "the solutions to runaway global warming lie in the soil and terrestrial vegetation, not the oceans" appears to conflict with a dominant natural cooling mechanism of our planet. 
 
As I mentioned in reply to comments from Greg Rau, a paper published in Science available at Dust in the wind drove iron fertilization during ice age, found that “iron fertilization of Southern Ocean plankton can explain roughly half of the CO2 decline during peak ice ages”.  This scale of impact, removing about 50 parts per million of CO2, could potentially be replicated in time frames relevant to anthropogenic climate change, especially since this increase in primary productivity due to dust also involves increased deposition of carbon to the ocean floor, as explained by Hendy.
 
The massive increase in ocean primary productivity in the ice ages, when CO2 level fell by 100 ppm, did not produce anoxia, or the other hypothetical adverse effects that people have posited, as indicated in benthic sediments.  The amount of unused nutrient in the High Nutrient Low Chlorophyll regions of the world ocean, more than sixty million square kilometres in size, is enough to significantly increase the ocean primary biomass, with likely flow-on benefits for biodiversity and cooling. 
 
Clearly there is much more need for research, especially computer modelling and field tests. The rationale is that working out the best ways to mimic the natural cooling feedback amplifiers of the ice age, for example using iron salt aerosol, could well remove more carbon than the decarbonisation plans of the Paris Accord, at a fraction of the cost and risk.  

Robert Tulip


From: Thomas Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
To: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>

Subject: [CDR] Ocean carbon versus land carbon sequestration

Thomas Goreau

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Aug 10, 2018, 1:15:41 PM8/10/18
to Robert Tulip, Greg Rau, Carbon Dioxide Removal, edi...@sciam.com, alysha....@geo.uzh.ch, l...@zurich.ibm.com, Soil Age
Dear Robert,

Almost all ocean productivity is limited by lack of nitrogen and phosphorus. 

There is excess iron in all coastal zones, and in ocean areas downwind from them. 

The areas of the ocean that are iron limited are only a very small proportion of the ocean, in very remote ocean gyres far from dust transport, and around Antarctica. 

These areas are the biological deserts of the ocean, so fertilization of them starts starts at the smallest baseline possible (but seems large proportionately even though not in absolute terms). 

The CO2 effect you describe is likely more due to increased solubility of CO2 in very cold  bottom water formation around Antarctica than increased storage of carbon in marine sediments. 

But this will be upwelled again in about 1500 years, less if deep water formation was greater than now.

The absence of anoxia during the Ice Ages was due to the greatly increased oxygen solubility in the cold sinking water around Antarctica.

But our current scenario is the opposite: high temperatures driving oxygen out of hot water, and increasing microbial decomposition of sedimentary organic carbon,leading to vastly increasing ocean dead zones. 

Global ocean dead zones are the real negative CO2 feedback global ocean carbon sink, by turning the oceans into a dead zone stinking of hydrogen sulfide, devoid of fish and anything but microbes, in which carbon piles up un-rotted in black shales on the ocean floor. 

This happened in every geological period of high CO2 and high temperature, and is why those periods ended. 

Killing the oceans does not seem a desirable solution, coral reef ecosystems vanished for several million years each time (although the coral species persisted in marginal habitats).

If we are to stop the global warming caused mass extinction of coral reef ecosystems, which we are ALREADY most of the way through, we need CO2 removal mechanisms that will work in decades, not in the millennia constrained by ocean mixing times.

In brief, ocean sinks seem to me to be unlikely to be as efficient or as fast as is needed NOW. 

On the other hand, carbon farming using rock powders, biochar, and compost could remove the excess easily in decades if most farmers regenerated their soil fertility, instead of running it down, as almost all now do, and as proposed BECCS would only increase.

Best wishes,
Tom

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Coordinator, Soil Carbon Alliance
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

Andrew Lockley

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Aug 10, 2018, 2:50:45 PM8/10/18
to Thomas Goreau, Robert Tulip, Carbon Dioxide Removal
It's worth remembering that any successful OIF will tend to strip Nr and P from surface waters. This will tend to deplete these nutrients from less Fe-limited waters, as mixing/transport occurs. So the net effect of OIF may not be as simple as as is often assumed.

A 

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Brian Cady

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Aug 10, 2018, 2:56:37 PM8/10/18
to Thomas Goreau, Robert Tulip, Greg Rau, Carbon Dioxide Removal, edi...@sciam.com, alysha....@geo.uzh.ch, l...@zurich.ibm.com, Soil Age
I thought iron limited oceanic areas totalled about 20% of the world's oceans, or 14% of the world's area
"HNLC regions cover 20% of the world’s oceans and are characterized by varying physical, chemical, and biological patterns."

Brian

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Thomas Goreau

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Aug 10, 2018, 2:57:55 PM8/10/18
to Brian Cady, Robert Tulip, Greg Rau, Carbon Dioxide Removal, edi...@sciam.com, alysha....@geo.uzh.ch, l...@zurich.ibm.com, Soil Age
That’s about right, but it is almost all the one fifth of the ocean with the lowest productivity. 

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Coordinator, Soil Carbon Alliance
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

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Peter Flynn

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Aug 10, 2018, 7:10:21 PM8/10/18
to Andrew Lockley, Thomas Goreau, Robert Tulip, Carbon Dioxide Removal

As noted before, ocean productivity has a limit in the presence of nutrients. Once dissolved carbon in surface waters is exhausted, for example in a spring bloom, the replenishment of carbon by transfer of CO2 from atmosphere to water is slow. It is the rate limiting step relative to light. Commercial algal growth ponds that are stagnant have less than 5% of the rate of production of biomass relative to theoretical maxima achieved in agitated systems.

 

If this is of interest conact me and I can resend Glen Tichkowsky’s Masters thesis.

 

Best,

 

Peter

 

Peter Flynn, P. Eng., Ph. D.

Emeritus Professor and Poole Chair in Management for Engineers

Department of Mechanical Engineering

University of Alberta

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

1 928 451 4455

peter...@ualberta.ca

 

 

 

From: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Andrew Lockley
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2018 12:51 PM
To: Thomas Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>

Thomas Goreau

unread,
Aug 10, 2018, 8:04:23 PM8/10/18
to Peter Flynn, Andrew Lockley, Robert Tulip, Carbon Dioxide Removal
CO2 limitation of primary production is very rare in nature, it only happens in very dense upwelling phytoplankton blooms, or in greenhouse plants with excessive fertilizers.

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Coordinator, Soil Carbon Alliance
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

Peter Flynn

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Aug 11, 2018, 1:46:49 PM8/11/18
to Thomas Goreau, Andrew Lockley, Robert Tulip, Carbon Dioxide Removal

Thomas,

 

I can imagine that CO2 limitation would be rare in nature, because plants would have evolved a growth rate to match the available supply. However, there is clear evidence of a CO2 limitation in commercial operations to produce algal biomass for sale: non-agitated ponds are CO2 limited. Hence I think the caution to check on CO2 transfer rates in any scheme to enhance biomass production in the ocean is prudent.

Thomas Goreau

unread,
Aug 11, 2018, 2:03:59 PM8/11/18
to Peter Flynn, Andrew Lockley, Robert Tulip, Carbon Dioxide Removal
Yes, you’re right, dense algae growth under full light and full fertilization induces diffusion-limited CO2 transport unless heavily aerated and mixed, but these conditions in the ocean are rare in time and space.. 

Some tomato growers put blocks of dry ice in their heavily fertilized and watered greenhouses and say it boosts growth.  But natural forests or pastures are limited by lack of nutrients, water, and light, not CO2. 

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Coordinator, Soil Carbon Alliance
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

Thomas Goreau

unread,
Aug 11, 2018, 2:29:27 PM8/11/18
to Thomas Goreau, Peter Flynn, Andrew Lockley, Robert Tulip, Carbon Dioxide Removal
We need to prevent the ocean from being fertilized to the point of including CO2 limitation as happens only in pea-green blooms. 

Fertilizing the sea has provoked ecological crises in most coastal waters, and has huge negative biological and chemical side effects that would last many millennia.

I don’t think those proposing this could possibly understand what eutrophication has already done to the rivers, the lakes, and now almost the entire ocean.

Best to keep intense algae production (which is needed for many good reasons) outside of the ocean waters and grow them in tanks on land where the nutrients can be fully recycled without causing more environmental damage from stinking dead zones, harmful algae-smothered reefs, toxic red tides, beaches covered with stinking seaweeds, and collapsing fisheries, as we are now seeing along almost all populated coasts. 

There are already far too much nutrients in the ocean, and they are killing sea life all around the globe, not just the coral reefs I’ve seen die in 60 years of diving.

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Coordinator, Soil Carbon Alliance
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

Andrew Lockley

unread,
Aug 11, 2018, 2:43:21 PM8/11/18
to Thomas Goreau, Peter Flynn, Robert Tulip, Carbon Dioxide Removal
Is an ocean anoxic event
A) an inevitable consequence of severe global warming 
B) a desirable outcome of OIF, or other fertilisation strategies 

Thomas Goreau

unread,
Aug 11, 2018, 2:58:18 PM8/11/18
to Andrew Lockley, Peter Flynn, Robert Tulip, Carbon Dioxide Removal
A) Yes: Carbon rich Black shales formed during wold-wide ocean dead zone events when CO2 and temperature were both much higher than now, and were the mechanism by which that excess CO2 was removed. 
While organic carbon piled up on the anoxic sea floor, most marine life survived only in very shallow water that winds could mix oxygen into. 

B) No: ibid

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Coordinator, Soil Carbon Alliance
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

Andrew Lockley

unread,
Aug 11, 2018, 4:33:41 PM8/11/18
to Thomas Goreau, Peter Flynn, Robert Tulip, Carbon Dioxide Removal
Is there, in your view, any realistic way that OIF etc can be made to work without involving significant ocean anoxia?

Andrew Lockley 

Thomas Goreau

unread,
Aug 11, 2018, 5:18:44 PM8/11/18
to Andrew Lockley, Peter Flynn, Robert Tulip, Carbon Dioxide Removal
Not if done on a large enough scale to significantly drawdown CO2.

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Coordinator, Soil Carbon Alliance
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

Robert Tulip

unread,
Aug 12, 2018, 8:06:05 AM8/12/18
to Thomas Goreau, Andrew Lockley, Peter Flynn, Carbon Dioxide Removal
Thomas

Some of your claims here may create false impressions.

The pollution causing ocean 'dead zones' is completely different from the potential impact of adding iron to the High Nutrient Low Chlorophyll regions.  The maps below illustrate the difference.  Dead zones are coastal areas polluted by anthropogenic nutrients, whereas HNLC regions, the main target for iron fertilization, are in the open ocean and measure more than sixty million square kilometres in area.

If it were possible to increase primary productivity by one tonne of carbon dioxide per hectare per year in all HNLC regions through the addition of iron, the immediate drawdown over 60 million square kilometres would be 60m x 100 = 6 billion tonnes of CO2 per year.  That gross figure is more than the Paris Accord plans to remove.  

Most of this carbon would either remain in the upper waters, increasing biological activity at the base of the food chain, or return to the atmosphere.  A significant proportion would be permanently removed.  This natural process was a big part of how nature cooled the planet in the ice ages, cutting CO2 by about 50 ppm. All that carbon in the air had to go somewhere, and it seems most of it went into plankton.  A miniscule quantity of iron is required per hectare to achieve this result due to the role of iron as a limiting element in pelagic regions with abundant N and P.  

By spreading iron very diffusely as iron chloride in the atmosphere, not the iron sulphide in the water tested a decade ago, the natural process is mimicked and a range of other cooling effects would occur (eg methane removal).  The price would be very low, possibly $2-3 billion per year at global level.  

Testing and modelling has not been done to ascertain if iron chloride aerosol addition could be safe and effective.  It is wrong to make claims to the contrary in the absence of scientific data.  Given the tendency of opponents of carbon removal to distort facts, it is essential that scientific debate stick strictly to rigorous evidence.

Robert Tulip   






From: Thomas Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
To: Andrew Lockley <andrew....@gmail.com>
Cc: Peter Flynn <peter...@ualberta.ca>; Robert Tulip <rtuli...@yahoo.com.au>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, 12 August 2018, 7:18

Brian Cady

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Aug 12, 2018, 9:21:42 AM8/12/18
to Thomas Goreau, Andrew Lockley, Peter Flynn, Robert Tulip, Carbon Dioxide Removal
I think Dr. Thomas Goreau is wrong on this.

I believe that anoxia here would require more than just iron, since silicon, nitrogen and phosphorus would soon limit HNLC area plankton growth, and I further believe globally-significant amounts of CO2 could be bound within plankton without depleting oxygen in these waters. Volcanic ash deposition has supplied trace iron to parts of the North Pacific lately after Aleutian eruptions, without reports of anoxia, to my knowledge.

20% of the world's oceans are high nutrient low chlorophyll (HNLC) areas, about 14% of the earth's area, or 102,000,000 km^2 . In the No. Pacific HNLC areas, iron levels reach 0.7 nmol Fe / kg seawater at 1 km depth; at the surface they were less than 0.1 nmol Fe/kg seawater. (Figure 9.19 Schlesinger's _Biogeochemistry_2nd ed._ 1997).
'The Redfield ratio describes marine life’s ratio of use of sea nutrients, and predicts which nutrient’s low levels will limit sea life growth. It addresses carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. Sea life uses C:N:P in the ratio of 106:16:1. The original Redfield ratio has been extended to describe another limiting nutrient, namely iron, after the discovery of iron’s importance in limiting sea life. The extended Redfield ratio is still under exploration, and is estimated to be C:N:P:Fe = 106:16:1:~0.001.'

Thus near-surface low iron might limit carbon fixed to (0.1 nmol Fe / kg seawater *106,000:1 C:Fe = ) 106mol C / kg seawater, or 106 mol CO2 / kg seawater.

10 Gton CO2 = 10 Pg CO2, (@44g/mol) = 440 Pmol, or spread over HNLC waters, (/ 102,000,000 km^2 = 0.102 peta m^2) 440mol/0.102 m^2 = 44.88molCO2 /m^2 sea.
If this is the 7-10% of carbon fixation that leaves surface waters; then 44.88mol/0.07 = 640mol CO2/ m^2 sea would need to be fixed - a reasonable amount.

How, one might ask, could iron be spread so thinly? Iron-containing fuel additives could be added to the fuel of jets traveling over HNLC areas, increasing combustion efficiency while spreading iron.

Brian


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Thomas Goreau

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Aug 12, 2018, 10:15:04 AM8/12/18
to Robert Tulip, Andrew Lockley, Peter Flynn, Carbon Dioxide Removal
I’m not an opponent of carbon removal as your last sentence implies, I’m a very strong proponent of it, but I think the ocean is the wrong place to do so for many reasons. It is just too inefficient at storing carbon for the reasons mentioned above, and could have disastrous side effects causing large scale eutrophication in the ocean. On the other hand, carbon stored in soil as organic matter and biochar is much more cost-effective and has positive environmental benefits. 

I think you are being way over-optimistic about the amount that can be stored by ocean fertilization, because almost all primary production dies, decomposes, and is returned to CO2 in surface the waters, and the small fraction that settles out of the photic zone in fecal pellets (what you incorrectly call “permanently buried”) is almost all broken up and consumed and returned to CO2 in the water column on the way down, before it hits the bottom. Almost all of that small fraction which reaches the bottom is eaten on the sea floor, and the little they can’t consume is mostly decomposed by bacteria after it is buried in the sediments. 

So almost all of what leaves the photic zone is not “permanently buried” as your numbers assume, but is also recycled to CO2 with varying time lags from years to millennia, and net burial of carbon is several orders of magnitude less than the numbers you use for the fraction leaving the photic zone. This is true even if the fecal pellets fall directly into dead zones where decomposition is lower and carbon can accumulate, because anoxic sulfate reducing bacteria consume most of the carbon even there, releasing the nutrients into the water. Those nutrient rich waters trigger eutrophication of surrounding surface waters.


Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Coordinator, Soil Carbon Alliance
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

Thomas Goreau

unread,
Aug 12, 2018, 10:18:31 AM8/12/18
to Brian Cady, Andrew Lockley, Peter Flynn, Robert Tulip, Carbon Dioxide Removal
Most of the iron-limited surface waters are in remote open ocean gyre ares (the deserts of the ocean) are also nitrogen and phosphorous deficient so those elements would be needed on a large scale too for large scale drawdown. 

Polar waters that are iron deficient are different because they have high nitrate since plant growth is light limited in the polar winter, so un-utilized nutrients accumulate in surface waters. Iron addition in these high nitrate polar waters causes massive blooms of the most iron-limited phytoplankton species, causing shifts between diatoms and dinoflagellates. This was seen in small scale iron fertilization experiments like those that have been done, but even there most of this production was rapidly consumed, and not permanently sequestered. 

To get the kinds of massive drawdowns needed  on a global scale would require addition of the other limiting nutrients. Fertilizing the ocean with nitrogen and phosphorus would be needed for drawdown in the non-polar low iron and low nitrogen surface waters, where they could cause oligotrophic (deficient nutrient) waters to go eutrophic (excessive nutrients), which is what caused dead zones. During high temperature periods in the past, the deep water of entire oceans went anoxic. 

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Coordinator, Soil Carbon Alliance
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

Dennis Amoroso

unread,
Aug 12, 2018, 10:26:45 AM8/12/18
to Thomas Goreau, Robert Tulip, Andrew Lockley, Peter Flynn, Carbon Dioxide Removal
Excellent points Thomas.  Our company is putting rock powder based products into farmland here in California and in West Texas and Arizona.  The weathering of this rock dust will accomplish some phenomenal reduction of CO2 as per the calculations you have put in your book, Geotherapy.  This is not a plan which will happen in the future.  We are doing in right now and the demand has escalated dramatically since our second year of extreme high yield in the almond orchards.  We also have great success with corn and the strawberry growers and the cannabis growers want product ASAP.
This is real life and real results happening daily.
Dennis Amoroso

On Sun, Aug 12, 2018 at 7:14 AM, Thomas Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org> wrote:
I’m not an opponent of carbon removal as your last sentence implies, I’m a very strong proponent of it, but I think the ocean is the wrong place to do so for many reasons. It is just too inefficient at storing carbon for the reasons mentioned above, and could have disastrous side effects causing large scale eutrophication in the ocean. On the other hand, carbon stored in soil as organic matter and biochar is much more cost-effective and has positive environmental benefits. 

I think you are being way over-optimistic about the amount that can be stored by ocean fertilization, because almost all primary production dies, decomposes, and is returned to CO2 in surface the waters, and the small fraction that settles out of the photic zone in fecal pellets (what you incorrectly call “permanently buried”) is almost all broken up and consumed and returned to CO2 in the water column on the way down, before it hits the bottom. Almost all of that small fraction which reaches the bottom is eaten on the sea floor, and the little they can’t consume is mostly decomposed by bacteria after it is buried in the sediments. 

So almost all of what leaves the photic zone is not “permanently buried” as your numbers assume, but is also recycled to CO2 with varying time lags from years to millennia, and net burial of carbon is several orders of magnitude less than the numbers you use for the fraction leaving the photic zone. This is true even if the fecal pellets fall directly into dead zones where decomposition is lower and carbon can accumulate, because anoxic sulfate reducing bacteria consume most of the carbon even there, releasing the nutrients into the water. Those nutrient rich waters trigger eutrophication of surrounding surface waters.


Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Coordinator, Soil Carbon Alliance
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

On Aug 12, 2018, at 8:06 AM, 'Robert Tulip' via Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDioxideRemoval@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Thomas

Some of your claims here may create false impressions.

The pollution causing ocean 'dead zones' is completely different from the potential impact of adding iron to the High Nutrient Low Chlorophyll regions.  The maps below illustrate the difference.  Dead zones are coastal areas polluted by anthropogenic nutrients, whereas HNLC regions, the main target for iron fertilization, are in the open ocean and measure more than sixty million square kilometres in area.

If it were possible to increase primary productivity by one tonne of carbon dioxide per hectare per year in all HNLC regions through the addition of iron, the immediate drawdown over 60 million square kilometres would be 60m x 100 = 6 billion tonnes of CO2 per year.  That gross figure is more than the Paris Accord plans to remove.  

Most of this carbon would either remain in the upper waters, increasing biological activity at the base of the food chain, or return to the atmosphere.  A significant proportion would be permanently removed.  This natural process was a big part of how nature cooled the planet in the ice ages, cutting CO2 by about 50 ppm. All that carbon in the air had to go somewhere, and it seems most of it went into plankton.  A miniscule quantity of iron is required per hectare to achieve this result due to the role of iron as a limiting element in pelagic regions with abundant N and P.  

By spreading iron very diffusely as iron chloride in the atmosphere, not the iron sulphide in the water tested a decade ago, the natural process is mimicked and a range of other cooling effects would occur (eg methane removal).  The price would be very low, possibly $2-3 billion per year at global level.  

Testing and modelling has not been done to ascertain if iron chloride aerosol addition could be safe and effective.  It is wrong to make claims to the contrary in the absence of scientific data.  Given the tendency of opponents of carbon removal to distort facts, it is essential that scientific debate stick strictly to rigorous evidence.

Robert Tulip   






From: Thomas Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
To: Andrew Lockley <andrew....@gmail.com>
Cc: Peter Flynn <peter...@ualberta.ca>; Robert Tulip <rtuli...@yahoo.com.au>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondioxideremoval@googlegroups.com>
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Brian Cady

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Aug 12, 2018, 1:29:01 PM8/12/18
to Thomas Goreau, Andrew Lockley, Peter Flynn, Robert Tulip, Carbon Dioxide Removal
       Ahhh, Umm, I made some errors,
       Actually (0.1 nmol Fe / kg seawater * 106,000:1 C:Fe = 106,000 nmol CO2 / kg seawater, or 0.106 mol CO2 / kg seawater. Now 0.106 mol CO2 has a mass of (0.106 mol * 44 g/mol =) 4.7 g CO2 /kg seawater

       Umm, and let me try that last formula <cough> again.
10 Gigaton CO2 = 10 Pg CO2 = 10E15 grams,
If spread over HNLC waters (102,000,000 km^2 = 0.102E15 m^2) 10E15 g CO2 / 0.102E15 m^2 = ~100 g CO2 / m^2 of HNLC sea surface.
According to Wikipedia ( 'Various studies estimated that less than 7-10% of carbon taken up during a bloom would be sequestered,[63]').
If that is 5%, then 20-fold more CO2 would have to originally be fixed, or ~2,000 g CO2 / m^2 of HNLC sea surface, (or / 44/12 = ~55 g carbon / m^2 HNLC sea surface).
While two kilograms of CO2 per meter squared of sea surface is a lot, a year is a long time. Per day, ( / 365 ) this is a flux of ~5.5g CO2 per sq. meter. At atmospheric pressure, this is a volume of  ('A mole of any gas occupies approximately 22.4 liters at 0 Celcius and at 1 atm.') ~2.8 liters pure cold CO2. As CO2 is now ~400ppm of air

       Andrew, trace iron catalyzes carbon fixation in biological systems, and reportedly catalyzes carbon combustion, according to

Brian





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Charles Greene

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Aug 13, 2018, 8:01:32 PM8/13/18
to Robert Tulip, Thomas Goreau, Andrew Lockley, Peter Flynn, Carbon Dioxide Removal
I am uncertain why we still arguing about ocean fertilization for CDR. It would take a Herculean effort and the other remote environmental impacts are likely to be quite negative. However, I admit that we are confronted by those kinds of challenges with most CDR approaches that have been proposed.  Most importantly, oceanographers have been conducting open ocean experiments and extensive modeling on this topic for three decades, and it just doesn’t appear to scale up favorably to the levels of CDR required. A tremendous amount of effort might get us to 10% of the CDR we need in a best-case scenario.

Strong et al.2009.Nature.pdf
Strong et al.2009.Oceanography.pdf

Charles Greene

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Aug 14, 2018, 1:24:26 AM8/14/18
to Robert Tulip, Thomas Goreau, Greg Rau, Carbon Dioxide Removal, edi...@sciam.com, alysha....@geo.uzh.ch, l...@zurich.ibm.com, Soil Age
Note the following quote from the “Dust in the Wind” website that was cited:

"Although Martin had proposed that purposeful iron addition to the Southern Ocean could reduce the rise in atmospheric CO2, Sigman noted that the amount of CO2 removed though iron fertilization is likely to be minor compared to the amount of CO2 that humans are now pushing into the atmosphere.”

“The dramatic fertilization that we observed during ice ages should have caused a decline in atmospheric CO2 over hundreds of years, which was important for climate changes over ice age cycles,” Sigman said. “But for humans to duplicate it today would require unprecedented engineering of the global environment, and it would still only compensate for less than 20 years of fossil fuel burning.”


Thomas Goreau

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Aug 14, 2018, 1:55:14 AM8/14/18
to Charles Greene, Robert Tulip, Greg Rau, Carbon Dioxide Removal, edi...@sciam.com, alysha....@geo.uzh.ch, l...@zurich.ibm.com, Soil Age
A major factor in the Ice Age drawdown, which is claimed to be due to iron fertilization of phytoplankton seems instead/also to be the increased formation of very cold deep water around Antarctica with very high dissolved CO2 content due to the cold temperatures.

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Coordinator, Soil Carbon Alliance
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

Andrew Lockley

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Aug 14, 2018, 6:03:49 AM8/14/18
to Thomas Goreau, Carbon Dioxide Removal, geoengineering
Cross-posting thread, due to relevance. 

I'm unaware of any modelling that has looked into the CO2 dissolution effect of below-pre-industrial polar cooling. This would likely be at both poles, due to the need to avoid a shift in the ITCZ

Comments from SRM geoengineering experts on this approach is particularly welcome. 

Andrew 

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Robert Tulip

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Aug 14, 2018, 9:04:37 AM8/14/18
to Charles Greene, Thomas Goreau, Andrew Lockley, Peter Flynn, Carbon Dioxide Removal
Hi Charles
 
Thanks very much for your comments on ocean iron fertilization, and for providing the fascinating article by Strong et al from Oceanography.  It is an excellent and informative overview of the history of tests and status of scientific views as of 2009, and of the political and commercial context. 
 
I have raised ocean iron fertilization for CDR here due to the new approach presented by Oeste et al in their 2017 article on iron salt aerosol, which presents OIF as one element among a number of related cooling factors that could result from adding diffuse iron compounds to the atmosphere. Iron salt aerosol differs significantly from the marine iron sulphate approach previously tested, giving reason to re-open the role of iron in climate restoration.  

Despite the sceptical research cited by Strong, it seems most probable to my reading that aerosol from iron-rich dust was a primary amplifying feedback for global cooling in the ice ages, so finding how best to replicate that process should be a major factor in stabilising the climate. As Franz Dietrich Oeste just said in reply, the atmospheric cooling effects of dust act in concert with the different biological and biochemical effects of iron at the ocean surface.
 
It may turn out that OIF was a precursor technology to the more integrated cooling approach of iron salt aerosol. Removal of a range of tropospheric GHGs including methane can be measured through field tests, combining with marine impacts of diffuse iron addition to produce cooling benefits that outweigh the hypothesised risks.  In any case, the lessons are that strict and transparent scientific approaches must be central.
 
It is possible that the marine impacts of iron fertilization could be far better than sceptics have suggested. For example, Oeste argues the estimates of carbon export to the deep in papers such as Strong and IPCC models, with calculated potential of one GT C/y, significantly understate the likely removal and storage rate.  This is partly due to failure of previous models to properly address the geology of the ocean floor and how sea floor aquifers convert CO2 into other durable forms of stored carbon. 
 
I approach these issues from an interdisciplinary perspective, not as a scientific specialist, and remain of the view that it seems likely that critics are understating the rewards and overstating the risks.  My views are shaped by the big numbers around global warming.  Emission reduction alone cannot avert catastrophe, and in any case the political likelihood of timely emission reduction is low.  Intensive research into augmenting the role of the world oceans as primary carbon sinks needs more focus, not less, given the balance of risks.  

The biggest risk is that right wing fears of economic harm from emission reduction will combine with left wing refusal to support research on carbon removal to mean no effective steps will be taken against a primary global security danger. 
 
The political debate has led me to a low level of trust in the scientific rejection of iron fertilization, mainly because of a fear that the science has in some way been contaminated by the prevailing politics with its exclusive focus on emission reduction.  Decarbonisation is widely viewed by climate lobbyists as an end in itself, the sole available way to stop global warming.  Alternative strategies, under the broad heading of climate restoration, are discounted due to the moral hazard argument that they would reduce pressure for decarbonisation.  

This way of thinking, emission reduction alone, has become more pronounced with the political polarisation of climate change, but is highly flawed despite its popular momentum. Arguments based on cost, efficacy, risk, conflict and feasibility suggest that climate restoration strategies including ocean fertilization can do more to slow warming than decarbonisation of the economy, especially if emitting industries can provide direct support.  

Strong et al seem to share this overly negative political bias. They present hypothetical risks, such as anoxia, downstream depletion and impermanence as reasons not to proceed with research.  For example, where their paper complains of ecological disruption, further analysis may find overall ecological restoration, due to factors like acidification and poleward migration. Strong’s argument that diffuse increase in marine primary productivity might be a bad thing looks questionable.  
 
Your statement that ‘remote environmental impacts are likely to be quite negative’ similarly appears to overstate the evidence, especially once the atmospheric cooling impacts of iron salt aerosol are also factored in.  I agree with your comment that establishing use of iron for climate repair would take a Herculean effort.  The Labour of Hercules in this instance may be more in gaining political acceptance and interest than in the technical side.  
 
If field trials and computer modelling validate the desk analysis, iron salt aerosol might be no more difficult to implement than the Montreal Protocol, and could be as successful.
 
There is much irony in your statement that a tremendous amount of effort might get us to 10% of the CDR we need in a best-case scenario.  That criticism applies far more pointedly to the Paris Accord than to iron fertilization.  
 
Thanks again for engaging on this material.
 
Robert Tulip

From: Charles Greene <ch...@cornell.edu>
To: Robert Tulip <rtuli...@yahoo.com.au>
Cc: Thomas Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>; Andrew Lockley <andrew....@gmail.com>; Peter Flynn <peter...@ualberta.ca>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, 14 August 2018, 10:01

Subject: Re: [CDR] Ocean carbon versus land carbon sequestration
I am uncertain why we still arguing about ocean fertilization for CDR. It would take a Herculean effort and the other remote environmental impacts are likely to be quite negative. However, I admit that we are confronted by those kinds of challenges with most CDR approaches that have been proposed.  Most importantly, oceanographers have been conducting open ocean experiments and extensive modeling on this topic for three decades, and it just doesn’t appear to scale up favorably to the levels of CDR required. A tremendous amount of effort might get us to 10% of the CDR we need in a best-case scenario.

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SARMIENTO, JORGE & Orr, James. (1991). 3-Dimensional simulations of the impact of Southern-Ocean nutrient depletion on atmospheric CO2 and ocean chemistry. Limnology and Oceanography - LIMNOL OCEANOGR. 36. 1928-1950. 10.4319/lo.1991.36.8.1928. After 100 yr, the increase in the organic matter flux is 6-30 Gt C yr-1 - about twice the global new production determined by the same model for the present ocean. The removal of nutrients from surface waters of the Southern Ocean reduces the nutrient content of the near-surface and intermediate depth waters of the entire ocean, resulting in a 0.5-1.9 Gt C yr-1 reduction of low-latitude new production. The oceanic total C distribution is shifted downward, resulting in uptake of atmospheric CO2 of 46-85 ppm (98-181 Gt C) in the first 100 yr. The oxygen content shifts upward in the water column, approximately mirroring the downward shift of nutrients. Some of the oxygen shifted to the upper ocean escapes to the atmosphere. As a consequence, the global average oceanic content of oxygen, presently 168 μmol kg-1, is reduced by 6-20 μmol kg-1, with anoxia develoing in the southwestern Indian Ocean.



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Thomas Goreau

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Aug 14, 2018, 9:11:40 AM8/14/18
to Andrew Lockley, Carbon Dioxide Removal, geoengineering
There is NO calcium carbonate deposition in the deep sea, shells landing on the bottom dissolve because of both low temperature and high pressure increase dissolution.

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Coordinator, Soil Carbon Alliance
Coordinator, United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development Small Island Developing States Partnership in New Sustainable Technologies
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

Franz Dietrich Oeste

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Aug 14, 2018, 8:28:01 PM8/14/18
to Thomas Goreau, Charles Greene, Robert Tulip, Greg Rau, Carbon Dioxide Removal, edi...@sciam.com, alysha....@geo.uzh.ch, l...@zurich.ibm.com, Soil Age
Yes, that's our argument too: The iron containing mineral dust induce multiple chemical, photochemical, and physical cooling effects in the atmosphere of direct chemical and photochemical depletion of the different greenhouse gases incl. CH4, VOC, O3, soot aerosol hydrophilization and cloud albedo increase plus several further effects. These cooling effects act in concert with the different biological and biochemical effects of iron at the ocean surface.

Franz D. Oeste
gM-Ingenieurbüro
 

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Von: "Thomas Goreau" <gor...@globalcoral.org>
An: "Charles Greene" <ch...@cornell.edu>
Gesendet: 14.08.2018 07:55:09
Betreff: Re: [CDR] Ocean carbon versus land carbon sequestration
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