Seriously, Team Aqua would be proud.

Rogue Geoengineering Project May Have Increased Salmon Numbers

"California businessman Russ George made headlines in 2012 when he, in cooperation with a group from a Native Canadian community, dumped more than 100 tons of iron sulfate into the Pacific, some 200 miles off shore. The iron then triggered a bloom of plankton. He apparently didn't ask anybody's permission, violated two United Nations conventions, and was widely condemned for taking on such a large project, a type of geoengineering, to alter the environment as he saw fit.

Iron causes blooms of plankton to form because the element is required for the tiny plant-like cells to live, and is usually only present in small quantities at the surface. Places with strong upwelling currents--such as areas off the U.S. West Coast--often have higher levels of iron brought up from the deep ocean, and for that reason often have abundant plankton and sea life. George's idea was to create this bloom to both absorb carbon dioxide (the plants need this greenhouse gas to grow) and to provide food for local salmon stocks. After the tiny cells capture carbon dioxide as they're growing, they eventually sink to the bottom and die, removing the gas from the atmosphere..."
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Honestly, I find this project rather fascinating, but I feel like there's another issue which the article didn't cover. As a part of the Carbon Cycle, algae itself is rather carbon-neutral, like most other plant matter. The algae which dies can and will decompose into carbon-dioxide gases, which will bubble up to the surface to be fed on by surface algae. This ultimately means less airborne carbon capture.

So what should be done? Well, it would make sense to simply remove the dead algae and prevent that carbon from being reintroduced. Then the new, living algae can continue to feed on the airborne CO2 only. That's what I wanted to talk to you guys about.

Everything about this article screams mission-worthy. The material we'd need is all sorts of cheap, but we could go a step further and capture the algae before it dies. Then all we'd need to do is dehydrate it and bury it in the ground before it can decompose. If we could find pools where large concentrations of algae already exist, then who'd be able to tell what we were up to?

I want to discuss this with you guys and see what you think. Should we turn this idea into a mission?

>>1 Can I dump in river?
Can I grow plankton in a water bottle?

This is great. It also goes to show that most governments obviously don't know what they are talking about when it comes to environmental concerns. Which is worrying since we all live in the environment. Although this guy may have broken the law he obviously knew what he was doing since it worked. I think he had the right idea and that the governments should be congratulating him and funding him for further projects. Aren't there loads of problems with over fishing and the like? well... this guy just found a way of alleviating the problem. And they absorb CO2... oh good we found another way to help slow down climate change!
We should be giving this guy all our money. Because where do you think where gunna be in 50 years when we've over fished all the fish to extinction and the climate change is so catastrophic that's its killing everything else as well...

>>2 Do not dump it in a river. Dump it in a lake. We want the chemicals to be stationary, or they won't work as well and then you're just throwing good money away.

>>3 You have to take into account some of the other parts of the article though. There is a limiting factor in the amount of dissolved nitrogen in the water source. Without that, a lot of the algae will just die and their carbon will just be released as CO2 again during decomposition. More tests definitely need to be done.

That said, I would love for us to be the ones doing those tests.

>>4 Though, if someone was to buy enough of it and put it in the river it would still work, regardless of how well it would work in standing water, yes?

Lakes, ponds, and maybe streams are on my agenda.
Also going to do a pound in a five gallon water thing, probably will throw some yeast in there too.
Let you guys know how that goes.

I don't know how I feel about this. I'm not sure if it's totally beneficial to be adding large amounts of iron to water sources - we don't know enough about the side effects yet.
It just doesn't sit right with me.

Just how much CO2 is actually absorbed by the algae...? Doesn't sound like removing the dead ones at the bottom will make a huge difference, at least not for decades of doing this, at least.

Plus it'd be kinda hard to collect dead algae from the bottom of a lake periodically, unless you just filled it with bottomfeeders or something.

>5 I think it could be potentially justified if the undercurrent is slow enough to not make as much of a difference. Or yeah, you would be having to use a lot more and then the concerns pertaining to >>6 would definitely come into question. From what I can read up on it, Ferrous Sulfate retains its chemical composition under normal conditions. Meaning that if it's not used by plants, it sits idle until it's used by plants. This also means keeping it out of water supplies that are direct feeders for human consumption.

>>7 Algae has the highest photosynthetic yield of any autotrophic species on this planet: 20% compared to 4 or 5% for most other plants. And the idea really is to try to find that balance of removing certain sections of algae before they die. This is all about carbon transplantation, more than simple stimulation of the carbon cycle.

&

ayy lmo