In July 2012 a private businessman named Russ George, or as the Vancouver Sun has dubbed him the “rogue climate hacker”. Dumped over 100 tonnes of iron into the pacific ocean, just off the coast of British Columbia in the largest ever geoengineering experiment.
The iron is meant to help spawn plankton (main stream press have dubbed these creatures “artificial plankton”) that will absorb carbon dioxide and then sink to the ocean bed. A geoengineering technique known as ocean fertilization. George hopes that this will be lucrative in carbon credits. But even the strongest of man made climate change proponents agree that he has gone too far, and some are outraged. According to the main stream news outlets.
When George and his former company Planktos Inc. attempted this very same project in the canary islands, the company boats where banned from ports by the Spanish and Ecuadorean governments. This is because many scientists believe that ocean fertilization can lead to toxic tides, lifeless waters, and increase ocean acidification.
In the above Vancouver Sun article Ken Denman is quoted:
It’s the ocean this time, and the experiment will likely do no serious damage, says Ken Denman, an oceanographer at the University of Victoria. Next time, he says, it could be some multimillionaire or “rogue” country shooting sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere to block incoming solar radiation in a bid to slow global warming.
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When in fact the aerosol spraying campaign are already, and have been running for some time. This is greatly illustrated in a report titled case orange, which can be read about HERE.
The part that is most troubling to me in this story is how a private business man can just go out into the ocean and dump 100 tonnes of iron into the ocean. Many of you have probably read about Bill gates and Richard Branson funding these types of projects. Which are usually comprised of experts from Universities and Governments.
This is new territory now. A blatant display of private companies getting into geoengineering, raises even further questions about the practice (as if we needed more). Is weather manipulation not only for governments, but for private companies (for their own profit) as well? Will this bring public private partnerships into the field? Are private companies being used, so that governments have “plausible deniability”? Is it simply a display of the corporate world trying to but in to make a profit? Etc.
But looking past all of those questions, is this one. How long are people going to ignore these projects that are killing us and our planet off? How long are they simply going to be labeled as conspiracy theory? I can only hope that we do not wait until it is to late!
