Letters

From the February 1998 issue

Talking About the Weather

Regarding Gregory Benford's cover story "Climate Control" (November): Bravo! I have waited several years for a reasoned discussion of the technical issues buried in the fog of propaganda on anthropogenic influences on climate. I suspect this piece will infuriate proponents of draconian government action.

I am struck by the persistent inconsistency of the position that inadvertent consequences of human energy use cannot be counteracted by intentional mitigation efforts. The thesis seems to be that mankind can only influence the environment negatively and unintentionally. Benford should consider a similar contribution to Scientific American.

Frank Albini
Research Professor
Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
Montana State University
Bozeman, MT

Benford's story was the first time I have been exposed to a point of view on climate that didn't portray modern industrial man as bumbling, incompetent, destructive, and incapable of effective action of any kind short of self-immolation. I have never understood environmental Puritanism and find it difficult, if not impossible, to challenge such Puritans rationally.

This becomes even more difficult when scientists themselves espouse these puritanical ideas. I'm sure many of Benford's suggestions, and even the very idea of geoengineering, went over with some people as well as a whale-blubber sandwich at a Greenpeace rally. This is to be expected. Fortunately, history shows that apocalyptic and Luddite movements quickly become irrelevant when their irrational fears are proven wrong by either time or the preponderance of evidence.

Unfortunately, when these movements have powerful state support, a lot of unnecessary damage can occur. Environmental Puritanism pretends to know the answer to every question concerning man, technology, and the environment: Technology: bad! Man: bad! Nature: good! All without considering man as an integral part of nature.

Before going to engineering graduate school, I worked for several years in the pulp and paper industry and learned the truth about recycled paper. I once suggested to an environmentalist acquaintance that as a small contribution to reducing greenhouse gases, we should collect paper, compress it into blocks, and bury it in an anaerobic environment. The process consumes less energy than recycling the paper (thus lowering greenhouse gas emission), and we'd be supporting a process that removes carbon from the atmosphere, makes good use of it as paper, and confines it forever underground. We could even bury it in old coal seams and provide coal for our (distant) descendants!

Needless to say, even though this person could not find any reasonable flaw with the idea, I was viciously attacked for even suggesting that using lots of paper and then putting it into a "landfill'' could help the environment. I now suggest this idea whenever I want to have fun with certain environmentalists. It's like a Zen riddle to them.

Gregory Wojak

Benford's article was very good. I had heard about the iron addition game but didn't have the details of the results. One interesting aspect of this approach is the possibility of ocean ranching. For example, take a large rotating mass of water in a low-productivity, iron-short area of the ocean. Within a few days we will see the algae bloom with about 2,000 tons of algae for each ton of iron. Zooplankton will then bloom to consume the algae, but before the zooplankton really gets going, we introduce filter-feeding fish larvae. Some species of fish will grow to harvest size in 60 to 90 days, with a weight gain of 10,000 kilograms or more.

This food chain will recycle some of the nutrients and decrease the overgrazing by the zooplankton, thereby stabilizing the system, with the energy flowing into the fish biomass and the carbon sinking with the fish feces. The added nutrient recycling and slower grazing rates should result in more carbon removal per kilogram of iron. The sinking rate of the high-carbon fish waste can be much faster than the smaller particles formed from the zooplankton.

Going into areas with few fish predators and parasites, we could transfer a lot of energy into fish biomass and get rid of a lot of carbon at the same time. Energy transfer efficiencies of marine food chains are very high (they can be in the 30 to 60 percent range--marine life don't spend energy keeping warm or fighting gravity). For every kilogram of iron, we could end up with 200 or more kilograms of fish, which is worth a lot more than a kilogram of iron waste product.

A profitable carbon removal system could become reality long before the governments can decide what to do. Some entity would have to enforce temporary property rights to a water mass to keep someone else from harvesting your crop.

Dallas E. Weaver, Ph.D.
Scientific Hatcheries
Huntington Beach, CA

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