Huge Geoengineering Project Violates UN Rules 319
Baldrson writes "The Guardian reports that a massive geoengineering project has been detected off the west coast of Canada that violates UN regulations. An Amerindian tribe in the Pacific NW that depends on salmon teamed with an entrepreneur and a group of scientists to have 100 tons of iron sulphate spread across a huge area of the ocean in order to spur plankton growth. 'Satellite images appear to confirm the claim ... that the iron has spawned an artificial plankton bloom as large as 10,000 square kilometers. The intention is for the plankton to absorb carbon dioxide and then sink to the ocean bed – a geoengineering technique known as ocean fertilization that he hopes will net lucrative carbon credits.' The entrepreneur, Russ George, hopes to cash in on the carbon credits and the Amerindian tribe on an increased salmon harvest. The situation has sparked outcry from environmentalists and civil society groups. Oceanographer John Cullen said, 'It is difficult if not impossible to detect and describe important effects that we know might occur months or years later. Some possible effects, such as deep-water oxygen depletion and alteration of distant food webs, should rule out ocean manipulation. History is full of examples of ecological manipulations that backfired.'"
Re:Soooo coool! (Score:4, Informative)
They actually paid the guy to dump the iron sulphate- 2.5 million is what I heard on the radio.
100 tons in, 100 million tons out. (Score:5, Informative)
Every year we take 100 million tons of biomass from the oceans (mostly as pelagic fish, 70m tons). And each year, we dump 6 million tons of garbage in the oceans, 2 million tons of waste oil, and discharge about 450 cubic kilometres of waste water into rivers (about 450 billion tons, so even ppb chemicals release more than 100 tons).
But lets worry about 100 tons of iron sulphate dust.
Re:Aww common! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Who the fuck says Amerindian? (Score:5, Informative)
A 1995 Census Bureau survey asked indigenous Americans and found that 49% preferred the term "Indian", 37% "Native American", and 3.6% "some other name." About 5 percent expressed no preference.
Moreover, a large number of Indians actually strongly object to the term Native American for political reasons. In his 1998 essay "I Am An American Indian, Not a Native American!", Russell Means, a Lakota activist and a founder of the American Indian Movement (AIM), stated unequivocally, "I abhor the term 'Native American...At an international conference of Indians from the Americas held in Geneva, Switzerland, at the United Nations in 1977 we unanimously decided we would go under the term American Indian. We were enslaved as American Indians, we were colonized as American Indians, and we will gain our freedom as American Indians and then we can call ourselves anything we damn please."
Re:Who the fuck says Amerindian? (Score:3, Informative)
In Canada, the Aboriginal peoples (or "natives") who are not Inuit or Métis are termed "First Nations". In Canadian French, the three groups collectively are "autochtones", and the First Nations are "Premières nations".
See the third paragraph of http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/indian (and in the French version).
Amerindian is just wrong, and especially wrong when referring to this group.