World's biggest geoengineering experiment 'violates' UN rules

[CHIMO]

A controversial American businessman dumped around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean as part of a geoengineering scheme off the west coast of Canada in July, a Guardian investigation can reveal.

Lawyers, environmentalists and civil society groups are calling it a "blatant violation" of two international moratoria and the news is likely to spark outrage at a United Nations environmental summit taking place in India this week.

Satellite images appear to confirm the claim by Californian Russ George that the iron has spawned an artificial plankton bloom as large as 10,000 square kilometres. The intention is for the plankton to absorb carbon dioxide and then sink to the ocean bed – a geoengineering technique known as ocean fertilisation that he hopes will net lucrative carbon credits.

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 fertilisation experiments

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering?commentpage=all#start-of-comments

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. Not sure there is a controlling authority here

Basically is there any way to charge him for such actions in international waters?

[TheMadMonk]

2. However, any amount of geoengineering is perfectly permissible...

...provided that geoengineering is not the primarly intent, but merely a side effect of other activities, such as driving, mono-culture farming, mining, landscaping, water management, forestry, introduction of invasive species, shipping, and just plain breathing and breeding. Not to mention how our waste disposal practices have made parts of the environment so poisonous we don't dare consume anything which comes from the vicinity of the dump sites.

The Persian Empire turned a once heavily forested and extremely fertile Middle East into the barren desert it is today. Dick waving alpha males removed every last tree from Easter Island, for no reason but to show who's balls clanged the loudest.

Australian and American aboriginies (both reputedly poster boy examples of responsible land custodians) got to where they were, when we white folk moved in and took over, by first utterly destroying the heavily forested landscapes that was present when they occupied continents that had up until that point had been hominid free.

Not exactly saying that what this bloke did is right, but given the catch-22 nature of such moritoria (no lifting with out results, and no results possible without lifting) nothing was likely to happen until someone did break the moritorium and he does appear to be vindicated by the results.

We're all so ready to put the boot into this fellow who's intention (whilst potentially massively profitable) is also highly altruistic, but farmers who's year in, year out overfertisation practices are KNOWN to result in toxic algae blooms and worse are all but given a free pass. Fisheries destruction is par for the course and people barely pay lip service to the utterly inadequate regulations that do exist.

We decry the destruction of orang-utang habitat and in the same breath tuck straight into the fucking Frito-Lays cooked in Indonesian palm oil. Brazilian beef and oranges. More palm oil plus coffee from Africa. Just what percentage of the EU's "green" credentials came as a DIRECT RESULT of the total destruction of Somalian fisheries, and the subsequent dumping of their toxic waste stockpiles in those same waters.

How many nations (Japan being a prime example) jealously protect their own 200 nautical mile exclusive ecconomic zones, but refuse to recognise the EEZs of other nations, because those nations aren't themselves being big enough eccological dicks to make it ecconomically unviable for others to move in and take and lack the wherewithal (or will) to exert the necessary territorial control to keep interlopers out?

Iron sulphate (the material in question) is a common industrial byproduct which is somewhat problematical for disposal on land but (given reasonable dilution ratios) can be dumped in the open ocean with near impunity.

Strikes me in fact, that it's the perfect biocidal additive for shipping ballast on multiple fronts. Whilst concentrated it will kill interlopers like zebra mussels and it also adds a nice protective anti-corrosive coating to steel, but once expelled into the environment and diluted, it either hurts nothing at all or acts as a pretty damned good oceanic fertiliser for carbon consuming organisms.

[AverageJoe90]

3. Yeah.

But where did you hear this stuff about the Middle East being heavily forested and all?

[TheMadMonk]

4. Gilgamesh, amongst other sources.

Phonecians also did their bit building the fleet with which they owned the Mediteranian.

Droughts may well be the final killer of many civilisations, but it's deforestation which gives birth to those droughts.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. Does the phrase “Cedars of Lebanon” ring a bell?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedrus_libani#History.2C_symbolism_and_uses
http://www1.american.edu/ted/cedars.htm

[font face=Serif][font size=3]…

The cedar trees of Lebanon were much heralded in the times of antiquity for their beauty, fragrance, commercial value, and utility in building. Research derived from historical abstracts reveals the relationship between ancient Lebanese cedar trade for commercial and economic profit, and the denudation of the once beautifully forested lands of the Levant. This case study, therefore, has certain relevance as an ancient trade issue with apparent environmental consequences, as demonstrated by a minimally forested Lebanon today; the significance of this research is hence justified. To know the appearance of Mount Lebanon in ancient times, as well as how its vegetation changed to a great degree, &quot I)s to come to grips with processes that offer unrivaled evidence of man's ability to transform nature." (Mikesell, p.1)

…

Writers such as Theophrastus, Homer, Pliny, and Plato, along with the Old Testament provide the modern world with documented descriptions of the once richly forested mountains of Lebanon. The wood's importance in social development and improving the economic well-being of ancient civilizations is also alluded to in the historical record.

…[/font][/font]

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. (See also…)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112725787