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Some environmental scientists seem to have a grudge against the oceans

Posted by: Maven on January 31, 2009 at 7:07 am

From Scientific Blogging:

Dumping tires in the water to create an artificial reef sounds either inspired or crazy. It turned out to be crazy but there was a scientific hypothesis to it. You just had to buy into their chain of logic.

There was also a lesson. Not everything needs to be done in a large experimental setting but the justification to go ahead and do it is always cost and the protecting the environment right now. ‘You care about the environment, right?’ I can’t think of a single time a question has been phrased that way that someone hasn’t tried to sell me something. And the cost savings are always framed to be immediately practical, though in the case of the artificial reef made of tires, the cost to clean up was 5000 times as much as it was supposed to save.

That’s just an example, of course, one failed experiment does not mean all experiments are failures but it does mean we should learn from mistakes so as to make fewer failures.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the LOHAFEX experiment to dump iron sulphate in the Southern Ocean, the hypothesis being that iron fertilization on a mass scale would drag a lot of CO2 to the bottom of the ocean. Like with building an artifical reef, the tires were not the concern, landfill space was – incorrectly, it turned out. Like those tires, iron fertilization is one of the few areas where environmental activists, practically all scientists except the ones who want to do it (and in the case of iron fertilization, have already done five similar experiments in the Southern Ocean without creating convincing data) and 191 UN countries all agree it is a bad idea. Why? Because the ecosystem is complex and if it turns out we are warming because of more than just CO2, the cost to fix a bunch of garbage in the ocean could be 5000 times what we think we are saving. Since I wrote about it, the mainstream media has also caught on and a new Nature article casts even more doubt on its viability.

Read more from Scientific Blogging by clicking here.

January 31, 2009 · Filed Under Oceans & Beaches

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