Outline of Episode 607 Iron, Oceans, Climate

Ocean fertilization as a potential climate solution, with potential benefits and limitations.

• Peter Fiekowsky explains that ocean fertilization can create more clouds, reflecting sunlight and cooling the planet.
• Ocean fertilization could remove CO2 from atmosphere faster than other methods.
• Jonathan Lauderdale outlines ideal scenario for ocean iron fertilization, but challenges persist.

Ocean fertilization to sequester CO2, with mixed results in different regions.

• Metta Spencer and Jonathan Lauderdale discuss the time frame for CO2 sequestration in the ocean, with Jonathan Lauderdale suggesting it may take up to 10 years for CO2 to be sequestered at 10-year levels.
• Experimentation in different ocean regions reveals unique nutrient requirements.
• Phytoplankton blooms in the southern ocean could increase fish population, but the fate of carbon afterward is uncertain.

Limitations of modeling ocean iron cycles due to limited observations and complex biological processes.

• Jonathan Lauderdale argues that co2 sequestration and solving the food crisis are similar, as both involve using nature to address human problems, but the net effect may not be to reduce atmospheric co2.
• Peter Fiekowsky suggests that kelp or phytoplankton projects could be designed to lose some amount of fish and co2 removal, but the models used to predict their effectiveness may not be adequate.
• Jonathan Lauderdale discusses new insights into iron cycle, including organic ligands that help keep iron available.
• Jonathan Lauderdale explains how organic molecules produced by living organisms can act as ligands for iron in the ocean.

Using natural disasters to remove CO2 from atmosphere.

• Focus on replicating natural CO2 removal methods, like ocean iron fertilization, to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels.
• Iron-rich ash from volcanic eruptions can stimulate phytoplankton growth, pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Ocean iron fertilization and its potential to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

• Jonathan Lauderdale discusses natural phenomenon in Southern Ocean affecting phytoplankton, while Metta Spencer questions overlap between iron-based climate repair proposals.
• Peter Fiekowsky suggests that eddies on Earth’s equator and poles affect ocean circulation and carbon sequestration.
• Peter Fiekowsky and Metta Spencer discuss the importance of eddies in phytoplankton carbon removal.

Ocean fertilization as a potential carbon removal method, with engineering and scientific perspectives.

• Jonathan Lauderdale emphasizes the importance of capturing ocean variability in models, requiring higher resolutions (10 km or less) to accurately represent mesoscale Eddy features.
• Jonathan Lauderdale highlights the importance of models in carbon removal, while others express skepticism about their effectiveness.
• Peter Fiekowsky argues that focusing on restoring a safe climate rather than reducing emissions is a shift in the environmental community’s thinking.
• Peter Fiekowsky and Metta Spencer discuss a project to reduce CO2 levels by fertilizing the ocean with iron sulfate, with the goal of reaching net zero emissions within 3 years.
• Fiekowsky’s group is working with groups in the Philippines to replicate a similar test off the coast of Mount Pinatubo, with the goal of scaling up the project globally.

Ocean fertilization as a climate restoration method.

• Jonathan Lauderdale expresses reservations about large-scale ocean fertilization due to potential side effects on global ocean cycles and connections.
• Jonathan Lauderdale suggests that research is needed to make predictions about these side effects and to develop a comprehensive approach to climate restoration.
• Jonathan Lauderdale discusses scaling up experiments to produce the same amount of downwelling as in Pinatubo, with the goal of reproducing the result in a fraction of the ocean area.
• Jonathan Lauderdale acknowledges the potential challenges and limitations of replicating the Pinatubo result, but emphasizes the importance of attempting to do so.
• Metta Spencer emphasizes the importance of synergy between processes in ocean fertilization.

Partial Uncorrected Transcript of Episode 607 Iron, Oceans, Climate (Warning: This machine transcript probably contains many errors. You should not quote it without checking the video.)

PF

Peter Fiekowsky

0:00

co2 is polluting the air sinks into the water and stays there for 1000s of years until something happens that comes back up, released back into the air warms the planet again that and that’s the end of the Ice Age. Okay, but

MS

Metta Spencer

0:16

now there’s there are a couple of other claims that I’ve heard connected to ocean fertilization, things that link it to other technologies. That, for example, that these plants emit something with the an acronym that I think starts with the D then creates Okay, and and that it they it whitens clouds and it What else does it do? Anyway their claims that it does it, it works in three different ways to help the climate. Can you explain those? Those three different ways?

PF

Peter Fiekowsky

1:05

I can just do one, which is that there’s a little bit of controversy about it. That is it’s hard, very hard to prove. And I don’t know why. But it is. But the dimethyl sulfate becomes a seed for clouds. So you get a you get more clouds and the white clouds reflect more sunlight into the air. Jonathan wondering, I can see you can say if you add to that,

1

Speaker 1

1:28

yeah, that’s my understanding of the effects of TMS.

MS

Metta Spencer

1:33

Okay. So, you both agree that this is something that happens, but the main the main thing is the main mechanism for cooling the plant climate would be the production of greater phytoplankton because of the the iron in the water, and that would absorb co2 from the atmosphere, just the way plants do on land, and then either get eaten by fish, which would be very nice because we’d have more more able to be able to feed more people, but also, some would simply sit to the bottom of the ocean, or at least some way down and and not come back up for a while. And yeah, and that way we remove the co2 from the atmosphere. And for a long time, and that’s what I I’ve heard people say, Well, maybe not so long or maybe get back in quicker than you think. Or things like that. So let’s see you you’ve given the best case app, and unless you have something more to say I’m gonna ask Jonathan to see whether or not that is a plausible story that he thinks really it would work that way or would something go wrong? Like

PF

Peter Fiekowsky

3:04

let me add one thing, which we where I started, which is that when we look at this the survival of our grandchildren there’s nothing else on the table that can remove the co2 fast enough. That the closest that that you and I have discussed. That, of course, is synthetic limestone. But that’s a lot more work. And it’s going to take many, quite a few decades to get that scaled up. And so it becomes ocean fertilization is is the kind of thing like it’s our only way to do it. And so we should start quickly and find find a way to to optimize it. We know nature has done it. Nature has not done it as fast as we have or as as fast as we want to. But we have more engineers and scientists and computers than a large margin. Okay,

MS

Metta Spencer

4:06

Jonathan, is he right? Or do you have some caveats?

1

Speaker 1

4:12

Yeah, I think I think that in the ideal scenario, you would add iron that would generate five plankton bloom that would take up there to the phytoplankton would either die in sync and be remineralizing the deep ocean which looks carbonated hundreds or 1000s of years depending on exactly how deep it get. And yeah, so that that’s the ideal. The ideal scenario, when we’ve tried ocean iron fertilization, in the real ocean by experiments, where you’ve gone out on big ships and dumped a bunch of iron into the ocean and tried to observe what happened. Yes, you generate phytoplankton bloom and some of those blooms. You can see them from space, which, you know, sizable sideways neck, you can measure the change in co2. So that’s two checks. But I think after that, the ideal scenario breaks down somewhat in the face of the carbon after it’s been drawn down is not so clear. In some cases, maybe you do measure thinking particular export, using tracks or other methods geochemical methods that you can use from observations. Some have revealed that that new biological material organic matter is reprocessed by zooplankton. So the tight like animals, tiny animals in the ocean, the grazers and that allows the co2 to reside in operation which doesn’t trap it for nearly as long as if it’s exported to the deep ocean. So I think I think there’s still

MS

Metta Spencer

6:18

but it doesn’t travel as long. How long is it? Is it good enough to make make it useful to us or is it like two days or something?

1

Speaker 1

6:26

Yeah, it kind of depends exactly on what depth but usually like if it’s in within the sort of top 100 or so meters, you might expect that to be released back to the atmosphere within a year due to winter storms that mix the upper ocean. And, you know, even even at the base of that layer. A year is probably the longest you might expect going down maybe 10 years, something like that. So when we’re talking about, you know, trying to fix the climate by 2050 and sort of co2 sequestration at 10 year levels is is not not really going to make the grade. And I think that the that’s the observations, I think the models don’t necessarily show either a climate scale drawdown of co2 on the magnitude that’s required. But also, I don’t think the models are there to be able to make those kinds of prediction. So I think we need to do more process experiments where perhaps on a small scale, do iron fertilization experiments, and then really measure every stage of that co2 pathway from atmosphere to uptake, the fixation and thinking and export and sequestration. I think doing that in different regions of the ocean is also really important. Because, for example, what happens in the Southern Ocean is not going to be the same as what happens in the tropical Pacific or the North Atlantic. So these are the kinds of things that experiment need to be done in the different regions because the models are already integrating that whole system, that if you do an experiment in a model in the Southern Ocean, that integrate the entire globe, right response of the ocean ecosystem, and the ocean carbon cycle.

MS

Metta Spencer

8:49

What Why would it not behave the same in different oceans? If it’s different

1

Speaker 1

8:55

in different ocean regions, you have different nutrient requirements. So for example, in the Southern Ocean, is how Peter described it where there’s lots of nutrients. And for six months of the year, there’s plenty of light, but there’s not enough iron. So you can go to these regions and do these iron federalization experiments. And this is where you generate generally the large balloon, and this high nutrient low iron scenario also exists in the upwelling regions of the tropical Pacific and the North Pacific. So if you were to go there, you might get a similar response. It would be different because of different temperatures and other other things, different ecosystem structures, stuff like that. On top of the nutrients, the same nutrient level, North Atlantic, for example, that is very close to a large source of iron from dust in from the Sahara. And so that region has sufficient iron, but it is deficient in macronutrients, such as nitrate and phosphate. And so if you go to those regions and as iron, nothing happened, because they require the thing, there’s there’s an open question about nitrogen.

2

Speaker 2

10:23

So Christian, is nothing happens or not much happens. Sorry.

10:27

That’s a good point. That’s a good plan. Probably not much happened.

10:32

Right. Okay. Good story. Keep

1

Speaker 1

10:34

going. Yeah, so, you know, there’s there’s a question about nitrogen fixation, where certain bacteria can use phosphate and iron it has quite a high iron requirements, which is perfect. To create their own organic nitrate that they can use nitrogen that they can use. They’re not very not, not many other bugs can do that. Which is why they depend on the dissolved nitrate in the same. That’s it? That’s a bit of an open question. No,

MS

Metta Spencer

11:12

I understand that. There have been quite a few experiments with people actually trying this and like eight or 10 or something like that. I don’t I’ve just heard that there have been experiments, but I haven’t heard how they turned out. How what is the general Is there a general consensus about what these studies have have yielded in terms of what we know now because of the studies or do they point in different directions?

1

Speaker 1

11:48

I think I agree in that. Adding iron, particularly in the southern ocean, generates phytoplankton bloom, and does drawdown the PCO two in the seawater, which is you know, one of the predictions of the of the of the theory, but I think the fate of the carbon after that is it’s though it’s an open question that those different studies have produced different results. Well,

MS

Metta Spencer

12:18

would you say that, I mean, one of the very interesting side effects or maybe, maybe it’s worth doing it for that alone is the the, the increase in the fish population? Because we’ve got a we’ve got 9 billion people going to be on this planet. And there’s, you know, we’re having foreseeing problems about feeding the ones we have in the next few years because of climate change. So I don’t know how we can increase it. Unless we do bring in things from the ocean. Now, could we could we increase the fish population by the phytoplankton is enough to work or make it worth doing?

1

Speaker 1

13:13

I, I’m not I’m not an expert on that part of their part of their story, but I think I would caution that if you I don’t I am not entirely sure that you can have it both. ways. You can have co2 sequestration, and increasing food stock. Because if you’re increasing the food stock, you’re pressing the carbon and sequester from the atmosphere into the fish. And then you’re eating the fish. And that means that the carbon that gets sequestered in the fish from the atmosphere is then going to be respired by humans, and that puts the co2 back into the atmosphere on a short timescale, which means that the net effect is to not reduce atmospheric co2. So I’m not sure that you can have it both as co2 sequestration and solving the food crisis. I think they’re similar. They’re similar in a similar argument with kelp reforestation idea in that you grow a bunch of kelp and then sinking into the deep ocean. Well, you could also eat that kelp because it’s very nutritious. And that would also help to help to feed the growing population, but that would also request the co2 for very long because that co2 would be respired by living and growing and stuff like that.

PF

Peter Fiekowsky

14:44

Don’t really add something to that. Yeah. So I think another answer is yes. And so you can design the kelp or the phytoplankton project to lose some amount of fish and some odds of carbon sequestration. Yeah, right. Because within one in any economic system, you have sort of a point of diminishing returns. So it doesn’t take that much fish to make a big difference doesn’t take that much co2 To make a big difference. And so there’s going to be a point where you say, this much fish this much co2 removal, and everyone’s very happy.

1

Speaker 1

15:26

I mean, that makes sense. Yeah. I just don’t think you can, you can have have both doing everything. I think that’s a point I was trying to make, but I don’t think I don’t think the models that you have to use to predict that would do a very good job either. So yeah, those those systems would need to be very carefully.

MS

Metta Spencer

15:50

What’s What’s wrong with your models? You’ve sort of indicated that that’s not adequate, was

1

Speaker 1

15:59

right. The model is rely on base observation of the ocean and parameterizations of biological processes, basically turning the messy biology into a mathematical equation that you can then run on a computer and those parameterizations those equations have parameters in them and sometimes it gets to the point where the parameters cannot be very well constrained by the observation because there are not enough observations or they’re not. They’re not the right kind of observations that you need to fit to constrain your parameters and stuff. Like that. So in you know, we’re, we’re still we’ve been researching the iron cycle itself, or, you know, 20 odd years, something like that. And they’re still developing they’re still including fundamental processes that we didn’t know about before. So for example, until about 10 years ago, something like that we relied on models that had that just took into account of the cycling of iron, and that was very simple. They’d have some dissolved time, like Peter said, it’s not very soluble. And it would be lost by scavenging, basically rusting or being absorbed on the particles and thinking and there was an input of dust. More recent models in the interim have introduced an additional parameter or additional thing that cycles with them called Organic ligand and those organic ligands help that remain available to the phytoplankton. And so they thought it was then had a fixed concentration of that ligand. But we didn’t really have enough observations to say how that ligands cycled over the last couple of years, maybe five years or 10 years. So now that we’ve had a vast increase in the number of observations of both iron and ligand and other trace metals, thanks to the big project called geotraces, which has gone out and done sections across the ocean, using the specialized techniques that you need to measure. The thing is, there’s no that previously there weren’t that many observations because it’s really hard to measure iron because you go out on a big rusty and you have metal equipment and stuff like that. So all your measurements would be really contaminated unless you had these really specialized things. It’s really clean instrument, and you take into account of all these other things. So measuring ions really, really hard, which is why there weren’t many measurements, and there still aren’t that many measurements of buying them. Modelling I’ve done has an update with modeling that I’ve been particularly interested in is how did the organic ligands affect the concentration of iron so there’s an additional cycle that goes on top of the iron cycle, which helps keep the iron available. And so you know, just just making this parameter now variable can lead to some really unexpected unusual behavior of the iron cycle. So

MS

Metta Spencer

19:45

where do you get these ligands is it part of some sort of plant that you throw in with the iron or what?

1

Speaker 1

19:53

Making organic molecule that some bugs pretty competitively trapped on their side? aeriform and so they’re produced by law, you know, I only scarce and so some some creatures have evolved to produce these things to make them more competitive, and to tap on. Other things that help bind iron might be excreted. From phytoplankton such as, like rivers and stuff like that. And proteins and what have you, and then also when a cell dies, it has molecules in it like chlorophyll, sorry, not chlorophyll. It has molecules in it that basically have Iron Bound to them when they’re inside their cell. And when the cell dies and splits apart, those molecules can be released back into the ocean, and a tiny fraction of them survive and act as this stabilizing ligand now in the ocean. So you can you can have that as a constant in your model, or you can make it variable by linking it to biological activity. And we’ve only we’ve only really just started investigating those things that have

MS

Metta Spencer

21:15

people going out on boats with with ligands and space around. Well,

1

Speaker 1

21:24

I think they have inorganic Megan So, for example, like water and can act as a ligand but not that I’m pretty much accident. But you can have other other ions that that help.

PF

Peter Fiekowsky

21:45

If I can take this on slightly different direction that when it comes to solving the climate problem, which is what I think is bringing us together here, but the question is, how do we discover how to do it? We know that our planet has ice ages, we know that this process happens, but we don’t know. We’ll know until we’re done. But the best that the by far the best evidence is that this process happens anytime I’m told. Anytime you put iron into ocean water, you get a fair amount of greening of it. The question is how do you get that to turn into a reduction in atmospheric co2? And then especially how do you get that reduction in co2 to last more than 10 years now? Normally would say 100 years but I agree with Jonathan, that if you’ve done 10 years, you’re inches away from doing 100 year so let’s just look at five or 10 years. Because if you try to do research that takes 100 years to do then we’ll all be dead. So and so in analogies and when Edison was a figuring out the lightbulb, he said that he went through 3000 different formulations to find one that worked well, which was tungsten. And so the sort of the engineering approach needs to be done in parallel with the scientific approach. So Jonathan’s talking about how do we improve our models so we can do better predictions and see places more interesting and valuable research. At the same time, we want to do sort of the Edison thing, which is, well, we know this thing works because we’ve seen it, and especially in 1992 after the month and until what Pinatubo eruption. The the co2 data shows that nature somehow removed about 20 gigatons of co2 in a year or so. And that’s extraordinary. And so now that we know that it’s possible, as quickly as we can figure it out, how do we replicate that level of co2 removal?

MS

Metta Spencer

24:09

Okay, let me let me ask. I mean, I have heard that the Pinatubo effect was it’s attributed to sulfur dioxide or something, but it’s it’s I’ve never heard anybody say that there was iron that does emit a lot of iron. It fell in the ocean and you had phytoplankton blooms too.

PF

Peter Fiekowsky

24:31

But there are two effects. One is the aerosols in the outer atmosphere, which reflected sunlight and cooled the planet by half a degree celsius for a year, year and a half, maybe two. And then separate from that was, as he said, the iron the ash that fell into the South China Sea. A few 100 miles, a few 100 kilometers from the eruption. And that would have while the aerosols cool the air called the planet, the the ash would have caused would have incited phytoplankton growth, which would have pulled co2 out now could be something else. But no other theories actually add up to the numbers. So I think that

1

Speaker 1

25:23

I think that it’s also seeing for more recent eruption, such as the Icelandic eruption I’m going to butcher the name but I a yellow Gecko, Yoko.

MS

Metta Spencer

25:39

That’s not the current one. That’s a previous one, right? No, no,

1

Speaker 1

25:42

it was the previous one. Yeah, yeah. That shut down European air. tracker for for a while, and had produced a lot of ash. And that Ash, I think was iron rich. Went into a particular part of the Atlantic where iron was a bit scarce, and I think that generated about five plankton and also the Hawaiian the recent Hawaiian eruption that’s in 2017. I believe that generated by the plankton blooms of the south coast of the Big Island I think I think these sort of natural I’m hoaxes do do tend to tend to do at least that, again, the fate of the carbon after that is hard to measure and not well known. But right. I so you know, I think there’s also other other items, such as in the Southern Ocean, of the, you know, you have a briefing current that runs around Antarctica and that has several islands that are in the way and some of them have iron rich sediment, as a entrained in the current brought up the surface, which also causes periodic iron, fertilization, driven phytoplankton bloom. So I think there’s a is a kind of natural phenomenon that they definitely have an effect in terms of phytoplankton, the co2 drawdown is an interesting an interesting result.

MS

Metta Spencer

27:34

To ask about the it any overlap between these two different proposals for a climate repair, one being this iron, salt aerosol thing and the ocean iron fertilization, but since both of them use iron if the I believe the iron shell aerosol idea is you fly around and and sprinkle ferric oxide or something, or some kind of iron in the atmosphere, which acts as a catalyst and knocks out the methane in the atmosphere. Well, now, when the when it’s through, that iron is going to fall in the ocean, and would it have the same effect as the people who deliberately went out just to do the iron ocean fertilization?

PF

Peter Fiekowsky

28:29

Well, I’ve looked into that. The best answer I have is barely that I don’t think it would make a significant impact. Because what we’ve seen with volcanoes is I don’t when I’ve looked at the co2 levels of the Keeling Curve, the co2 since 1958, which is has been carefully measured, that the only volcanoes I’ve seen that has impacted that was the Pinatubo, and then in 1963, there was a volcano in Bali. Now the Bali volcano, had about a quarter of the impact of Pinatubo was still a huge impact. However, the Bali impact was only lasted less than a year, and then co2, went back up to what it would be if there had been no co2 removal at all. And I find it for me that’s fascinating because it tells me that one thing is growing the phytoplankton. But then this next thing is to how do you get that carbon deep enough, so it lasts more than 10 or 100 years? And, you know, as an engineer, we separate the two variables. First, let’s grow a lot of phytoplankton and then, which is pretty much a solved problem. And then it’s a solid low level, but then at the level we want for restarting the climate. That one hasn’t been tested and refined. Then the next question is how do you get it to have you get the co2, the carbon sequestered? And when I look at the data, and this is the advantage of being an astrophysicist rather than ocean physicist? I just look at the raw data and say, well, what’s the difference between Pinatubo and the South China Sea and Indonesia which is only 500 miles away? And the differences the Indonesia is right, Bali is right almost on the equator. Where there are no no met at eddies the meso scale Eddie’s

MS

Metta Spencer

30:57

and no fluff

PF

Peter Fiekowsky

31:01

big Eddie’s in the ocean are called mezzo scale medium scale Eddie’s 100 to three years in diameter. I don’t

MS

Metta Spencer

31:12

know why they’re important.

PF

Peter Fiekowsky

31:15

They’re probably important. So I say and I think number of people are beginning to agree, or tentatively agree that when it was the Ugandan Edie on the planet. If it’s not on the Equator, and it’s not at the pole, then the eddy is going to the just the nature of centrifugal force on the rotation of our planet is going to cause the water to be pushed downwards or upwards. And so you had download Eddie’s that are clockwise in the northern hemisphere, and if it’s a counterclockwise you have upwelling, and it’s easy to see on the max because an upwelling Eddy is cold in the middle because it’s pulling cold water and then by conduct calling it is a maybe a tiny bit warmer because it’s pulling presumably pulling the water down.

MS

Metta Spencer

32:19

So I’ve been I’ve been aware that it upwelling is very important, but I didn’t know that it had anything to do with eddies. Okay. Thank you. All right, I deflected you go back to where you

PF

Peter Fiekowsky

32:31

go back to the important question. And so what I’m excited I’m excited about this, because we can incrementally, as I said, row that phytoplankton and then we can do test to see what is it it wasn’t the downwelling Eddie, where the Asheville from Pinatubo that had that brought the the carbon down. It’s fascinating, because one of the big questions I had a chance to ask Jonathan we can discuss it offline. But the the 12 to 14 or even almost two years of hard removal from the Pinatubo. It’s like how could that have happened? What would have maintained it for such a long time? Well, we’ll have to find out that happened. In fact, in the boiling volcano, it was also more or less the same phenomenon, that we I wouldn’t have expected it because we do have good measurements from the eruption and target two years ago. In the winter. Two years ago, there was this big underwater eruption and the satellite measurements so that the phytoplankton lasted 10 or 12 days, and then they just dissipated into the noise and so see us carbon removal that lasted six to 15 months. Like how did that happen? Well, the wave you find out is to do testing. And so I’m excited to help get that testing started as soon as we can.

1

Speaker 1

34:27

I think it’s really interesting like the ocean is so variable, it’s a matte unit, look at a map as the ocean and people draw these nice smooth arrows on there really, it’s a real sort of chaotic kind of Eddie’s and all sorts of fronts and it’s so variable that yes, 500 kilometers can make a huge difference, even though the timing can make a difference to the amount of ologists just the effect of different kinds of patients. Yeah. Again, that’s, again, that’s why the models need to be need to capture these small scale features better, because at the moment, and the C models, for example, have nominally 100 kilometers scale, and that is not sufficient to properly capture these mesoscale Eddy features you need a model that has 10 kilometer resolution or less. And that just increases the computational expense of both of those simulations by you know, so so so much that they’re not commonly commonly done. But you know, with involvement in GPUs, and stuff like that we can start to make a dent on getting that resolution down to the right levels or capture these that capture that ocean variability in much much better fidelity.

PF

Peter Fiekowsky

35:59

I think an important thing to see us for the audience is there’s the science of it, which is critically important. And then he has the engineering of it, which is separately, critically important. Because you want to keep the audience obviously, and you want to keep keep refining the data, as what’s nice about engineering is it’s goal directed in my career here in Silicon Valley. You know, I’ve had the goal of increasing the efficiency of semiconductor manufacturing, and we don’t want to go into those details. But you know, I work with a factory, there’s a certain process, how do we maximize that process very clear. And we get results in months or a year. That’s separate from the exploration in science, which is also critical, which is wide open, you say, give me any data you’ve got and I’ll add it into my model. And we want to do both. I

MS

Metta Spencer

36:57

want to ask about

1

Speaker 1

37:00

Korea. Yeah. Just to add to that, I think I do converge. At the point where the marine marine CDL community come into it because CDR is carbon dioxide removal, because the there’s a big push for using models to validate the amount of carbon that he’s drawn down and then assign carbon credit to said that experiment. I think that’s where that’s where the model is and the observations link in with the engineering when people start to want to make lots of money off of it.

PF

Peter Fiekowsky

37:48

What was a really important point, I know that the hour is coming to an end here, and let’s discuss it offline. But in the chat, the pushback against that point, which is obvious, and there’s no arguing with what you said. But the carbon asset model is so minuscule compared to this 50 or 60 Giga tons a year that’s needed. But I found is it really I hate to say it detracts from those of us who want to actually restore co2, safe co2 levels, because the what you can do with the carbon offset bottle is that the wrong order is wrong by three orders of magnitude for the most part. They’re they’re trying to do maybe a billion tons of co2 we need to do a trillion co2.

MS

Metta Spencer

38:41

I want to switch to the question of how soon you could actually deploy a system like this. How quickly Could you do something at scale? If you decided that we wanted to or get permission in a way and the question of whether or not anybody is claiming they have some risk involved? Is this considered a dangerous thing to do? For any reason that we actually understand now? Is there some stuff that happened? What did people who argue against this have against the idea in particular?

PF

Peter Fiekowsky

39:23

Well, I’ve studied that a lot and then jump in whenever you can, but this is the most of what I can do in the last five or six years. And there aren’t any reports of dangerous phenomena from ocean fertilization, doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen. But it’s always important to look at the actual data. And nature has been doing it for at least a million years and possibly a billion years. And so we’re confident that nature is well adapted to carbon removal because we’ve had ice ages. So the safety it needs to be monitored. Of course, just like, you know, anytime you’re farming, you monitor for bad things that happen even though people have been finding for 1000s of years. There’s both sides of the safety in terms of people’s opposition. It comes right back to what Jonathan and I were saying a couple minutes ago, that if your climate goal is to eliminate emissions, then removing co2 is counter to that because if we fix the climate, if we restore a safe climate, then you can’t pressure people who are driving their car. Or taking their plane. If the climate is fine. How do you tell them to stop doing that? Now, when you think about it, and realize, oh, the purpose of climate work is to restore the climate and restore us safe co2 levels, then that’s a whole different game. The environmental community is right in the middle of a shift from reducing emissions to producing a safe climate. Because back in the 1980s, they were the same thing. Their climate let’s see if we can keep the climate safe. But that changed in 1988. When co2 was above the official 350 parts per million limit. That was but that’s a long time ago, like that’s 37 years ago or something. And no one’s changed the we’re just now changing the thinking that our goal is no it’s no longer appropriate to just focus on emissions. We don’t have to focus on co2 levels. And the proposition came from the fact that the ocean fertilization does not have any impact on emissions, and therefore they said it’s a false climate solution. But I think that is changing this year. So that’s the first your second question which is, how can it be done? We’re working with the some some groups in the Philippines right now to get a project going in the same off of Mount Pinatubo to do a replicated testing within 12 months, when we can do it.

MS

Metta Spencer

42:22

We have about blow up a schedule for you to say now 321 Go

3

Speaker 3

42:33

Well, I didn’t say anything for a second. So people’s imagination can run wild for a second seconds over No.

PF

Peter Fiekowsky

42:45

No, we would distribute about 100 tons of iron fertilizer to the same fertilizer you put on your yard or on a cornfield iron sulfate about 100 times so it’s about $100,000 worth over 100 kilometer square area. So this is similar to test that was done in 2012. And uh but that was done in the Gulf of Alaska, this has begun in that in that downwind off of a tuba. And so we’re hoping that within a year

MS

Metta Spencer

43:23

you know, how would you expect any climate change? You couldn’t expect that to have any observable effect on on global temperature? Would you

PF

Peter Fiekowsky

43:39

the first one no, the first one, the scale is I don’t have what fraction but it’s a fraction of what’s needed. But as engineers, what we’re doing is we’re saying okay, let’s assume that it works as we expect it to what would the next step and the next step, the next step, and so, within three years, we can if things go according to plan and nothing goes according to plan, but you make plans in case they do. If things go according to plan, then in three years, then we we could reach net zero again. How about that. So then, the issue is not so much the science and the engineering, those have to be done. But it’s like, oh, my gosh, how do you arrange the global politics? So that see that shift from focus on emissions, that focus on co2 levels happens rapidly. And that’s right now, where my group’s attention

MS

Metta Spencer

44:40

whether whether Jonathan would even be in favor of having you do this, Jonathan, you think you should go out there and do that?

1

Speaker 1

44:49

I think it’s a lofty, lofty target. I you know, I feel I still worry. Yeah, I think I think we need to do more to test before deploying as a as a large scale, large scale solution just because we don’t understand the system well enough to be able to make predictions about a tweak to the to the environment.

45:27

Totally agree.

1

Speaker 1

45:27

I totally agree. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, so I think I think it the government permission is a hurdle that needs to be worked on a bit to allow the scale these smaller tests to occur. So that we can learn more without better newer instrument and are better observing technology and stuff like that and learn more about the ocean nine cycle in interactions with the ecosystem at a larger scale. And I think on a global scale, I do have reservations about ocean iron, fertilization is self in that, I think that on timescales are longer than than a human lifetime. The ocean is connected in a sort of global conveyor belt type situation where I think if you take nutrients from one spot, like the Southern Ocean, and you do it at scale, that we’re talking about large scale ocean fertilization here, you know, in the future sometime, taking nutrients from from one region, which is downstream of another region, where the nutrients currently are used, leads to potentially unexpected side effects. And the way that you measure those things and observe them is difficult and unexpected, I think. So. One, one scenario that I might imagine is that you take you take a bunch of nutrients in the southern ocean, which then affect your fish off the North Atlantic. And by the time the fish duck that saying issues, it’s difficult to connect it back to the ocean, I’m federalization of an ocean. And this is been as large scale long, long ish timescales, but I think these connections in the ocean are really important things to consider. And again, this is where the money comes in. To be able to be able to make predictions about about those things. So I think, I think, you know, as a, as a as a method or climate restoration, I think as part of a package of different things. You talked about the launch date and stuff like that, which I think is another promising method again, that need lots of research to get it up to up to speed with it. On virtualization, but I think putting all your eggs in one basket, for example, we think we need to consider if that’s if that’s a good thing or not. Well,

PF

Peter Fiekowsky

48:28

let me cover the number of the things you said. So the first one was scale up. And so then engineering. It’s part of any engineering processes to scale up carefully. And so we would start out, as I said, doing the same thing that was done 12 years ago. And then and in this case, our plan is to divide it into a four by four grid 16 sections, where we can try different formulations of iron oxide, iron sulfate and concentrations and phosphorus and so on. And so we can start constraining the test. And then once we’re getting reliable results, which should be given how rapidly phytoplankton grow in this in the equatorial regions can be very quick. Then we can expand on visitors to 200 kilometers to 300 kilometers, if we can. At that point, it’s not unreasonable to think that we could get the same amount of downwelling as Montana to budget. You know, I don’t know. There’s a lot that will be learned but in Pinatubo did it without engineers and thought scientists have any technology. And so with our very rapid research now, it’s not shocking if we were able to reproduce that, after two or three years, two or three years of scale up, at which point we’re at zero, and it’s still only a 10th of 1% of the ocean area. And so, now, that the thing that I that’s, that’s, you know, hope that’s likely giving Jonathan a bit of a headache at the moment my saying that is for 30 years, the oceanographers have studied the Southern Ocean, and just what’s going on Southern Ocean is slow enough that the thinking is we need to do this to to the large fractions of the ocean basin. Now, I’m saying well, let’s be optimistic and let’s see versa we have this data in tubo, which says that we can produce the result. And we know that there’s enough sunlight, there’s physically it’s possible that we can do it in 1%, or even a fraction of a percent of the ocean area. If we replicate what happened in Pinatubo. Now, there may be some reason we can’t but the only way we’ll find that is by assuming that we can discovery that

51:07

wherever we fail. I’m

51:08

also being optimistic.

MS

Metta Spencer

51:12

I’m there I want to be updated to go ahead, finish

1

Speaker 1

51:16

it I just wanted to I wanted to add one more thing, which is that you pointed out previously that Pinatubo potentially in jest, and that you present you potentially add other nutrients that the phytoplankton need, and I think that is a key thing that may maybe affected go down. It’s not just iron, you’re adding these other nutrients that the phytoplankton need, and that allows you to increase the amount of co2 that you draw down over just in the ocean at the time and as potentially, a key part there. So just adding the iron. I think maybe that not necessarily like the the key driver, I think the counseling if there’s anything there’s anything I’ve learned from working on oceanography over the last 15 years, is that these connections are really important, like individual processes, can do stuff, but I think the synergy of different processes is what really leads to significant changes. Okay,

52:31

that allows us

PF

Peter Fiekowsky

52:34

this kind of has never been had before better. Okay, this is the first time this conversate I’ve been talking to a lot of people, and you’re getting us together is a watershed landmark moment. So

MS

Metta Spencer

52:47

Well, thank you. It’s always fun. It’s my favorite hobby. And you guys are my my craft tools. Anyway, I thank you very much and we do. We are over so I better call this to halt, but maybe we should get you know there are going to be other conversations about ocean fertilization. So let’s see how we can hook it all together and make a coherent discussion. When other people join as well. Okay. So this is this terrific. I’ve enjoyed it very much and I think it’s important I’m glad to know that you think so. too. Okay, blessings, take care.