Geo-engineering the Galapagos: The Risks from New Global-Warming Ventures

Common sense and history says it would be only a matter of time before entrepreneurial enterprises in our era made themselves known in the fight against global warming.

Sadly, they’re not necessarily out to help; or at least, not entirely.

A month or so ago a group called Planktos wanted to begin dumping large amounts of iron in to the water around the Galapagos Islands. The theory is that by artificially increasing the amount iron in the water, it will help seed plankton that eats (stores) carbon from the atmosphere.

The Galápagos Islands -a protected archipelago of volcanic islands distributed around the equator, 965 kilometres (about 600 miles) west of continental Ecuador in the Pacific are all part of Ecuador's national park system, was the catalyst for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection during the famed voyage of the HMS Beagle in 1835.

Over the past several decades, the seas have begun to decrease their carbon consumption. Man-made pollution has severely damaged our oceans, and one must only look at the dead zones forming in the China East Sea and the Gulf of Mexico for proof.

Algae blooms are the issue that companies like Planktos are trying to combat. By ‘seeding’ the oceans, they believe that they can combat the blooms and bring oxygen back to the waters.

But, when you think about it, what are the companies getting out of it? A warm fuzzy feeling for helping the environment? Unlikely. No, by being able to “clean up the environment” Planktos believe that they can then sell carbon-offset credits to companies. It’s all about the bottom line.

The next in the line of entrepreneurial climate fighting is an Australian group, Ocean Nourishment Corporation (ONC). They have just been granted approval by the Philippines government to dump a large quantity of urea in the Sulu Sea between Philippines and Borneo.

As with Planktos, ONC have received immediate criticism from global environmental advocacy groups across the planet.

“The global South is once again a dumping ground for risky technologies – this time our oceans are being threatened by high-risk geoengineering schemes that are rushing forward without public consultation or intergovernmental oversight,” said Neth Dano of Malaysia-based Third World Network.

“A few months ago we learned that Planktos, Inc. wants to dump iron particles in the ocean near the Galapagos – now Southeast Asian coastal waters are the target for experimental urea dumping. It’s disgraceful that carbon-trading profiteers are marketing these experiments as humanitarian projects to feed hungry people and arrest climate change,” said Dano.

Groups such as Ottawa-based ETC Group, UK-based Corporate Watch, Malaysia-based Third World Network and the Philippines' SEARICE have begun to petition the governments of the UN formed London Convention – the body established to prevent unauthorized sea dumping – to put a halt to ONC’s plans.

Brandon Keim over at Wired.com put it best, when he described the problems at hand;

“But iron seeding is controversial, with some scientists saying it might produce even more CO2 -- and compared to urea dumping, iron seeding is well understood.”

No one is overly happy with any sort of dumping, and when you continue along the chain of chemicals, you continue to get more indecision and fewer facts. The biggest problem is that these methods may be the only way of saving our planet. The question marks may simply have to be ignored, if we are to stem the … tide!

Posted by Josh Hill

Story links:

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/11/carbon-offset-c.html
http://www.etcgroup.org/en/materials/publications.html?pub_id=659
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urea