Pacific Ocean Hacker Speaks Out: Scientific American
Andrew Lockley
Below is page 1 only. Follow link to read more
A
This past July Russ George served as chief scientist on a cruise to fertilize the northeastern Pacific Ocean with iron—the latest in a long string of similar, and usually controversial, efforts he has led. He has been attempting to commercialize such ocean fertilization efforts for years, including setting up the failed company Planktos. In parallel, he has also been promoting plans to generate carbon credits for companies and governments, allowing them to emit greenhouse gases in exchange for replanting carbon dioxide-absorbing forests from Canada to Europe.The ocean fertilization experiment is similar. The idea is that by providing missing nutrients, a plankton bloom can be created. Such a bloom sucks up CO2 as it grows, like plants on land, and then, potentially, buries that carbon at sea as the tiny corpses sink to the bottom. But at the same time, George is hoping the bloom will trickle up the food chain and feed salmon, restoring their historic abundance. Of course, if the bloom is eaten, then animal metabolism will reemit the CO2, sending it back to the atmosphere and defeating the purpose of reducing CO2 emissions, as prior scientific studies have shown.George says he is convinced that iron fertilization can be a solution to global warming, and he's pitched the idea to everyone from the Haida people of British Columbia to would-be "seasteaders" looking for a business proposition for their floating cities. Given the controversy surrounding George's latest bid—which is billed as an attempt to restore salmon populations but also aims to earn saleable carbon credits—Scientific American spoke with him on October 19.[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]How did this Haida Salmon Restoration Corp. project start?This is a village project. They started it, they own it, they run it. It's not the Russ George rogue geoengineering story.You've seen the vile and vehement twisting of this story. You can probably imagine how I feel. I was the faith and trust and hopes and dreams of a village whose environment is dying, whose culture is dying because the salmon are dying. And now the world is saying they were duped.So did the iron fertilization work?We don't know. A really famous scientist once told me: "Russ, keep in mind: you don't know." The correct attitude is: "Data, speak to me." Do the work, get the data, let it speak to you and tell you what the facts might be. Don't assume you have this prescient knowledge of how everything is.But we do know that in 2008 when 450 million sockeye salmon left the Fraser River, the expectation was that fewer than one million would return. More and more baby salmon go to sea and fewer and fewer adult salmon return. But in August 2008 a volcano dusted ash, and the northeastern Pacific Ocean turned into a massive plankton bloom. The plankton bloom was of larger proportion than what we did in the area. So 40 million fish came home instead of a million. That offered some hope.There have been three volcanic events in the last 100 years paired with record sockeye salmon runs. That's pretty good data. Those fish don't do fishy science, they do good science. Their physical bodies are data, you can track where they've been because of the discrete isotopic characteristics of different parts of the ocean.
Rau, Greg
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Haida+iron+dumping+project+sought+Swiss+company+sell+carbon/7442556/story.html
Some nuggets:
"Documents obtained by the conservation group Living Oceans show the Village of Old Massett council voted on Feb. 11, 2011 in favour of securing a loan with the Northern Savings Credit Union for $2.5 million for the start-up of the corporation, secured with funds from the village and Gwaii Trust Society parity funds. Northern Savings commercial accounts manager Barry Pages declined to comment on the loan.
"In information released during a press conference Oct. 19, Old Massett leaders said the community decided to invest the $2.5 million after failing to raise funding from government or private investors.
"However, the documents obtained by Living Oceans show the Village of Old Massett told the Gwaii Trust it “avoided seeking investment funding in order to maintain control over the project.”
So it was a commercial not a tribal loan, and lacking carbon credits, the only possible payoff will be salmon sales by the tribe. The nearby Annette Island fishery landed 1.2M fish in 2011 at a gross value of $5M: http://www.metlakatla.com/wp/dfw/files/2012/06/Metlakatla-Salmon-Catch-Escapement-Report.pdf
Assuming that half of this was profit means that the the Haida will have to land 1.2M extra fish to pay off the loan (minus interest). Would be interesting to know what the current Haida annual catch is, and therefore how much this will have to increase over x amount of time to pay off the loan. Think I'll give Northern Savings a call to see if they would be interested in bankrolling a project I have in mind ;-)
-Greg
German businessman Alexander Schoppmann
German businessman Alexander Schoppmann says he was approached by controversial American carbon project developer Russ George to sell greenhouse gas reduction credits from a Haida Gwaii ocean iron-dumping project.
But Schoppmann says he declined to take the project on.
Schoppmann flirted with the possibility of his company selling carbon credits once before for an ocean iron fertilization project, in a 2009 and 2010 venture he called Blue CO2.
Before it folded, Russ George was the lead scientist at Blue CO2, Schoppmann said in an email interview.
George surfaced again in 2011, this time in Haida Gwaii, where he was working with the Old Massett Village Council on a plan to scatter iron sulphate in the Pacific Ocean.
The resulting plankton bloom was meant to revive a salmon fishery and create a carbon sink, which proponents hoped could be sold as credits on the carbon trading market.
The $2.5-million project, which came to light earlier this month, has been the subject of negative international media attention because critics say the experiment violated international ocean anti-dumping conventions.
In bank loan documents, Schoppmann was identified as a potential broker for carbon credit sales.
However, Schoppmann believed there was no money to be made through the venture.
His company, Schoppmann & Partner AG, based in Zug, Switzerland, is no longer involved in any carbon credit projects because there is no market for them, Schoppmann said.
Schoppmann said the Blue CO2 project folded because it was forbidden by the United Nations. Schoppmann also called human-caused climate change “a hoax” and accused international governments of trying to create a worldwide tax on carbon through the offset market, but said he still believes ocean carbon sequestration has the potential to be lucrative.
He said he was not daunted by the United Nations rejection.
“We saw the obstacle to not being able to sell the carbon credits, ever,” said Schoppmann, who also once tried to get a pro-smoking airline off the ground.
Other industry observers also note there is no global market for carbon credits from plankton blooms, including one of Europe’s largest certification firms, The Gold Standard, also based in Switzerland. A spokeswoman said the organization had never worked with or heard of Schoppmann & Company.
Without selling the carbon credits, there appears to be no way Old Massett can recoup its money for the large-scale experiment.
At a five-hour meeting Tuesday night — which was closed to members of the media and people from outside the communities — Old Massett chief councillor Ken Rea defended the iron-dumping project to the 100 attendees.
Haida elder and project opponent Gloria Tauber said numerous people asked whether the $2.5 million was all gone, but there were no immediate answers.
Rea has promised an audit to show residents how the money was spent, she said. “What came out was that a lot of money has been spent and a lot of money will continue to be spent, but if there’s any return it will be quite a while before they see any of it,” said Tauber.
Her son Clint, who also attended the meeting, said the hypothetical carbon credits are still being touted as a way to recoup the money, and so are restored salmon stocks when they return to the islands.
George, the controversial American carbon project developer, is one of four directors of the Haida Salmon Restoration Corp. created by Old Massett to oversee the iron-dumping project, according to the B.C. Corporate Registry.
Another director is Victoria-resident Jason McNamee.
John Disney, Old Massett’s economic development officer, is a director and president. In an email sent Wednesday, he said all communication has been cut off with the media.
In an interview Wednesday, Old Massett resident Marlene Liddle, the fourth corporation director, said she was not familiar with the financing of the iron-dumping project.
Documents obtained by the conservation group Living Oceans show the Village of Old Massett council voted on Feb. 11, 2011 in favour of securing a loan with the Northern Savings Credit Union for $2.5 million for the start-up of the corporation, secured with funds from the village and Gwaii Trust Society parity funds. Northern Savings commercial accounts manager Barry Pages declined to comment on the loan.
In information released during a press conference Oct. 19, Old Massett leaders said the community decided to invest the $2.5 million after failing to raise funding from government or private investors.
However, the documents obtained by Living Oceans show the Village of Old Massett told the Gwaii Trust it “avoided seeking investment funding in order to maintain control over the project.”
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group.
To post to this group, send email to geoengi...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
Mick West
And remember this isn't the Guardian speaking, it's the bank that lent the money for the project.
Lest you conclude that we have merely picked out the negative
biases from otherwise favourable reviews we invite you to visit
the sites. It is also instructive to use those same sites to search
for references to Planktos Science. Certainly we could find no
reference to proprietary technology or recognition of Planktos
Science as a "world leader" in this area.
Other key factors are the character and capacity of the
proponent Planktos Science and the market for the carbon
offsets. Again, we were unable to satisfy ourselves from the
information we were able to find.
Planktos Science's principal, Russ George has clearly been
active in promoting this process for several years but there is
conflicting information about his results. White it is not unusual
for a pioneering entrepreneur to have ups and downs gathering
some detractors along the way, we did not find and independent
confirmation that Planktos Science is a high level science based
organization "recognized as a world leader' or that it has
"proprietary technology." Schoppman.org is identified as the
link to the buyers for carbon offsets but again their website gave
no specifics about their expertise or capacity to perform this
role.