Experimenting or tampering?

An international experiment to fertilise a swathe of the Southern Ocean has run into trouble.

Tonnes of iron dust were to be dumped into the sea from an Indo-German research ship across a 300 square kilometre area near the Antarctic in an experiment to test its possible use in absorbing a greenhouse gas. Earlier attempts have been made to check if this can increase marine algal blooms which in turn increases the ocean’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide. But this expedition, Lohafex, was on a larger scale.

Under pressure from environmentalists, the German science ministry has suspended approval to the expedition. The Ocean Iron Fertilisation is just one of the many examples of geo-engineering our way out of troubles.

Nature online reported that the German science ministry has asked Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), the research body behind the expedition (along with India's National Institute of Oceanography), to commission an independent assessment of the study's environmental safety.

The experiment will flout an agreement signed by 191 countries at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2008. Besides, there is fear of unknown side-effects from the dumping of iron.

The scientists insist all "signatures'' of the iron seeding will be quickly erased by the ocean. (Naturally, the ocean is wide and the seeded material will fast be dispersed, removing it from detection!?) They also point to an international meet permitting scientific research on ocean fertilization that had, in effect, made the CBD declaration irrelevant.

The point to be raised here is: should we be attempting geo-engineering to solve problems we have ourselves caused? Sprinkling aerosols in the atmosphere to ward off warming was one such idea mooted. Tackling an alien plant species by introducing yet another alien seems simple enough, but is not. Or even, geothermal energy tapping when undertaken on a massive scale.

Two years ago, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved 18 geothermal drilling permits. That number more than doubled in 2007 and has nearly quadrupled this year. The government leased a staggering 244,000 acres for geothermal development in the past 18 months. Another 146,339 acres went up for bid Friday in Utah, Oregon and Idaho. All of it was claimed.

Do we have any idea what such extensive deep drilling could unleash? Is it safe? can some geologist let us know?

Isn’t there a danger of continuing with business as usual with the arrogant assurance of an eraser near at hand? Fully knowing the eraser could well cause new problems! Can we afford to take risks without knowing possible outcomes?

Should man learn to abide by Nature’s rules or try to change Nature? Do log in your comments.