The highly controversial plan to stop climate change | Russ George for Heretics

This “rogue” ocean hacker says the solution to climate change is easy & cheap — so why are governments trying to stop him?

Is adding iron to the ocean a safe way to grow plankton blooms that capture masses of carbon dioxide?

That’s the claim of rogue geoengineer Russ George, who put 120 tons of iron into the ocean in a controversial experiment in 2012.

George explains that instead of climate change solutions that would cost trillions of dollars and take decades, iron fertilization of the oceans would cost millions and take mere years. However, geoengineering is a controversial and unregulated domain. Heretic or hero—what do you think?

Here is some further reading on iron fertilization:
The climate renegade
Engineering the Ocean
The Complicated Role of Iron in Ocean Health and Climate Change

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Read more of our stories on ocean restoration:
3D ocean farming: creating food while cleaning the ocean
New AI tool checks up on ocean health from space
The world’s first lab-grown coral could help save the ocean reefs
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Watch our original series:

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[freethink]

Many of you have commented that you're interested in sources or reading more information. Great instinct! Here are some good articles covering the technology (and controversy) in more depth:

[vikramgogoi]

It is heartening to go through the comment section and find people being civilly skeptical and maintaining the scientific temper instead of falling into chaos and spinning conspiracy theory or spewing venom.

[Pyriphlegeton]

I feel like a full length debate between him and some opponent to the idea would be very interesting.

[puzzLEGO]

I'm a bit skeptical about this one, but if in a few months this guy suddenly appears on the news everywhere after some part of the ocean suddenly gets restored I will not be surprised.

[creightonfreeman]

The problem with this is that if you get the amount of "mineral fertilizer" wrong you create eutrophication or sedimentation rather than just increased productivity. It could be helpful if you get it right or disastrous if you get it wrong. It would take more research and gradual implementation to make sure negative consequences do not occur. Each environment would need a unique and specific amount of enrichment to have positive rather than negative results...and you can't just grade the results by Salmon production. The ecosystem is more than just primary producers and Salmon. Given the stakes, that research is definitely worth pursuing though. What makes me think I know anything? I have an M.S. in fisheries biology/management from O.S.U.

[ianthompson]

There are a couple of issues in this story.
1. Most of the Iron that Australia exports is Iron Oxide, not Iron Phosphate. Iron Phosphate is relatively rare compared to Iron Oxide. So no, you can't sweep the ports around the Pilbara for this to work as most of the tailings would be Fe3O4, not FePO4.

2. It's not the Iron that causes the Algae to bloom, but the Phosphate. The ocean is Phosphate poor, and Phosphates are a finite, limited resource needed for land based agriculture. One phosphorus rich source that could be used instead of mineral phosphates is sewage, which is rich in phosphorous because there is such an excess now in all the food we eat.

3. The calculations of the amount of phosphate needed and it's cost are almost certainly wrong. A ton of algae has absorbed about 2 tons of CO2. Human CO2 emissions are around 36 Billion ton per year, so to absorb ALL of human emissions would be 18 billion tons of algae, which is roughly 460 million tons of phosphorous, more than double the annual global production, at a cost of $114 billion per year.
We don't need to absorb ALL of human emissions though. Annual crop production, if changed to regenerative farming to put carbon back into the soil could absorb roughly 10 billion tons of carbon.

[ThemePVT]

We should focus on ‘what’s the harm in trying it’, smaller more regular experiments, rather than debating ourselves to death. You never know, it might just work as Russ says it will.

[fathana.m]

This is a well known practice in bioremediation - especially done during hydrocarbon oil spills; Phytoplankton in the ocean often already has the ability to acclimatise and breakdown oil. So one way to utilise them is simply through biostimulation - adding the necessary nutrients to stimulate the growth of these phytoplankton able to breakdown hydrocarbon oil. This is already often utilised by big oil companies such as Exxon during their oil spill in 1989. So what he's saying is not that crazy or far off honestly.

[ScopeofScience]

This is a wildly biased take on this story that essentially leaves out the reasons that the government intervened. The reason environmental engineering schemes like this are considered controversial is because they could be extremely detrimental to the environment if there are any unexpected consequences (which, and I put on my "MSc in Environmental Science hat" for this, I take as a given).

[ZipperOfficial]

Sweet! Something I can say that I actually studied a little bit on!

On top of what others have mentioned he. I.e Iron phosphate not iron oxide, this being known by the time he done this and a few other things. Another thing should be noted. Ocean blooms are notorious intense ecosystem reaction, even small ones have long lasting impact to food chain of other species. Now a world wide one? That would be completely unprecedented. Sometimes these can get so out of control they create what are called dead-zones.

Which is when they get so numerious they prevent absorption of oxygen by other organism. Which is a very well known and studied event. I am very surprised this guy didn't mention this.

Infact. I am highly suspicious of his claim of the goverment reaction to what he mentioned. He's leaving out well studied details on top of that. There is more to this story. I don't really believe this guy

[Pyriphlegeton]

We must keep in mind that this is completely onesided.
Even so, very interesting, thanks for bringing it to our attention.

[qwertyduckman]

After reading the paper, there's no evidence on whether we know the large increase in salmon and ocean wildlife was due to higher rates of growth and reproduction and not a disrupting aggregation of sealife from nearby areas. This theoretically could end up being great for that area, but extremely harmful for surrounding areas that may lose balance in their ecosystem. This could also cause disruption to important ocean migration routes when all nearby fish are enticed to come to the 'feeding'

[TheMoistGrapefruit]

Something like this could have potential, obviously dumping absurd volumes of iron oxide into the ocean isn’t ideal. But the most depleted regions of the ocean could have tests carried out to see if there is a correlation between plankton blooms and fish population increase.

It doesn’t need to happen all at once.

[ariachaudoir]

If we cause too much life to bloom near the surface, I worry we may rapidly decrease the oxygen saturation levels possibly causing an ocean wide dead zone. Seems like we should maybe use this, but should also employ caution and other methods.

[russellpurdie]

I'm a spearfisher on the east coast of Australia, the droughts several years ago put millions of tons of iron into the Tasman sea and as well as with this years rains I've seen a huge increase in baitfish and those that eat them.

[robtartsa.i.]

This plan is not rogue nor is it controversial. Both the pros and the cons are relatively well known. Back in 2017, my team worked on similar research, but using a multistep chemical solution with microconcentrations of transition metals to remove the anticipated externalities of introducing algae blooms, and the results seemed pretty promising.

[The_Horizon]

why does this guy look like "hide the pain harold"

[PixelShade]

I guess the biggest concern with projects like these is that when pushing them out on a global scale it will most certainly screw up the complex balance of nature. Humans are disruptors, and no matter if we "pollute" or "try to save" we usually end up with detrimental side effects which we could never foresee. Tree planting is another such thing, in many cases we have destroyed the natural habitat of regions due to large scale systematical approach to tree planting. When we design solutions we do so with broad generalizations and simplicity, yet nature is nothing like that, it is complex, hard to understand or get a complete picture of all of its complexity. We cannot simulate the side effects because we don't have the amount of detailed data required to do such a task. We might solve one, or a couple of problems, but the side effects could be worse than the ones we actually solve.

My solution for humans is just to own/use less, minimize our dependence on natural resources. My solution has been to stop consuming unnecessary stuff, being less reliant on our financial system, I repair what I own (instead of buying new), I became vegan (which has been a wonderful journey for my health). The only issue is that this fall on the individual level, and nobody wants to be told what to do. So we rather want to believe in easy solutions and that we can innovate ourselves out of our problems.

[derherrdirektor]

It is fully possible that dams are preventing huge amounts of mineral dust to reach the ocean. This spill of material into the sea could have been the norm.

[PhillipHilton]

Before we get into it some background for those watching this who don't know much about either marine ecosystems or commercial fishing.

1. Canada has the best quality salmon on the planet.
2. Canadian salmon is amazing because Canada is so diligent about protecting its waters from both industrial pollution and overfishing.

This guy says that a Canadian SWAT team raided his offices because dumping iron ore in the sea both increased salmon stocks and decreased atmospheric CO2? That's not why they shut him down though is it?

They shut him down because our 'boy genius' here decided to drop tons of an 'anonymous material' - that turned the water red and created algal blooms - into pristine fishing waters a nation depends on for both food and employment. The same fishing waters which feed millions of human beings. The peer reviewed studies supporting the 'science' on what they did here are either weak or inconclusive.

It seems - though he empasises he got support from the native community for this reckless act of stupidity - he didn't notify the Canadian government or get their permission first. I can't be the only person watching this and thinking WTF? Is he sprinkling lead paint chips on his breakfast cereal in the morning or is his ego bigger than Mount Everest? What was he expecting a pat on the back and an 'atta boy'?

His take away says it all "It's a global conspiracy..." No it isn't! Look at what he did! This guy willfully put a nation's food supply at risk and...would have done it again. The Canadian government were 100% right to close him down for it. This is the Dunning-Kruger effect writ large.