Scientists Pump 65,000 Litres of Chemicals into Ocean to “Stop Global Warming” in Geoengineering Project
Scientists have pumped 65,000 litres of chemicals into the ocean off America in a controversial geoengineering experiment designed to “stop global warming”. The Mail has more.
Last August, 65,000 litres of bright red chemicals were pumped into the Gulf of Maine – yet this wasn’t an enormous industrial disaster.
Instead, it was a controversial geoengineering experiment that scientists claim could help to slow down global warming.
The oceans already hold around 38,000 billion tonnes of CO2, trapped as dissolved sodium bicarbonate, or baking soda.
The geoengineering method known as Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) aims to speed up this natural process by resetting the ocean’s pH.
Over four days, scientists added vast quantities of sodium hydroxide – an alkaline chemical tagged with a red dye – to the waters off the coast of Boston.
Making the ocean more alkaline should encourage it to absorb even more CO2 from the atmosphere.
However, critics have warned that the potential effects on marine life remain uncertain.
Gareth Cunningham, Director of Conservation and Policy at the Marine Conservation Society, told the Daily Mail: “These approaches are resource-intensive and their ecological impacts are still poorly understood.”
For years, scientists have put forward OAE as one of the leading potential solutions to climate change.
In theory, the novel approach could solve two problems at once by locking away excess CO2 from the atmosphere and fixing the oceans’ rising acidity.
Without an ‘antacid’ like sodium hydroxide to react with, CO2 dissolving in the oceans forms a mild acid that has slowly but surely reduced the pH level.
This is already having catastrophic effects on sea life, as the acid dissolves marine creatures’ shells, damages coral, and even wears away sharks’ teeth.
The LOC-NESS (Locking Ocean Carbon in the Northeast Shelf and Slope) project is the first large-scale experiment to test the impact of OAE in an open water setting.
With approval from the US Environmental Protection Agency and engagement with local fishermen, scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution poured alkaline chemicals into the ocean 50 miles (80 km) off the Massachusetts coast.
They then used cutting-edge technology, including autonomous gliders, long-range autonomous underwater vehicles and shipboard sensors to track the spreading chemicals.
Over the next few days, the scientists measured 10 tonnes of carbon entering the water as the pH increased from 7.95 to 8.3 – matching pre-industrial levels.
In the best-case scenario, the researchers estimate that the sodium hydroxide would absorb about 50 tonnes of carbon over the next year, equivalent to the average yearly emissions of five UK citizens.
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Dividing tonnes of CO₂ emitted in the UK by (some estimate of) the number of people in the UK doesn’t yield yearly CO₂ emissions of UK citizens. At least no more than dividing the number of rapes pere year in the UK by the number of ash trees would yield the number of rapes committed by each ash tree per year. Any two numbers can be divided. That doesn’t mean the quotient says something meaningful about the units attached to these two numbers.
It’s more meaningful if we think of it in terms of an extra 5,000,000 tonnes of extra CO2 from this years immigrants in their first 12 months. And each year again, after that. It’s a major contribution to our net zero targets…….make it make sense, Ed!
It isn’t, either. CO₂ is predominantly a side-effect of economic activity and calculating per-capita CO₂ emission is just trick to make countries with large economies and relatively few people aka European countries look worse than countries like India with a relatively smaller economy and a huge number of people.
Actually “CO₂ is predominantly a side-effect of
economicbiological activity”C + 2O → CO₂
is an exothermic reaction commonly known under the name fire which is a fundamental part of human technology (in addition to also happening naturally a real lot). It’s not only used to generate electricity but – for instance – also powers the huge fleet of HGVs driving stuff around all over Europe.
And yet if you empty the dregs from a coffee cup into a storm drain you get fined 150 quid… ho hum.
I hate ‘environmentalism’ for all that is doing to the natural World. Like BLM doesn’t really care about balck lives, they don’t really care about the environment considering all the destruction done in the name of ‘caring’. In fact it is ‘caring’ and ‘being good’ that appear tp be the most dangerous threat to humanity and life in general.
“Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.”
Adam Smith
And of course the electricity used in the electrolysis to produce the sodium hydroxide, and the heat used in evaporating it down from weak solution, and the transport used to get it to the ocean, don’t produce any carbon dioxide! It’s a miracle!
Is this a joke??
A warm up act before 1st April???
Sorry just saw this
Or 1st April ….
As Ian Plimer has pointed out, you breathe in CO2 at 400 parts per million and out at 40,000 ppm. The best thing that these environmental lunatics can do is drop dead!
Judging from the numbers given in the text, the best-case of this experiment amounts to reducing global CO₂ emissions by about 0.000008% of the yearly CO₂ emissions of the UK which are already globally insignificant. And this bought at the expense of locally polluting the ocean with a chemical (NaOH) that’s, according to an online source strongly irritating and corrosive which will have affected the local environment accordingly.
These people are clearly as insane as they’re dangerous.
If I understand this correctly from what I have read, adding this Caustic Soda to Saltwater will not only cause blindness, skin burns and lung damage to whales and other sea mammals, as well as fish, but will also cause an explosive heat reaction, even boiling the water and the lifeforms within it. And in forcing the saltwater ocean to absorb more carbon dioxide, it will actually become more acidic in the long run, harming the wildlife and the planet even more.
Usually whenever “scientists” announce some deranged new scheme to harm the planet by “saving” it, they have already been doing it for years on the sly, like spraying chemicals into the sky to cause “Solar Dimming”.
It’s projects like these that make people think most scientists should be sectioned as a matter of public safety.
Pouring huge amounts of toxic chemicals into water because someone believes this won’t accomplish anything useful isn’t science. Just lunacy.
It’s Satanic!
Climate Change Politics isn’t and never was about science though, as you know already.
Nevertheless, this is so insane that I’ve asked myself if this wasn’t perhaps someone finding a clever way to get paid for dumping toxic waste into the sea instead of being prohibited from doing so. The idea that huge amounts of a strong base can just be dumped into a complex ecosystem without causing immense damage to all local life forms is just completely mad (if someone ever believed that and not just couldn’t care less because of $$$).
Caustic Soda is already used for sewage treatment, and kills algae. You will remember Algae, the greatest source of Oxygen in the sea (like Grasslands on land), and the food source of Zooplankton, which in turn are the main food source for Baleen Whales, already under threat by wind turbine construction, especially off the Northeast coast of the US, precisely where these crazed scientists are dumping Caustic Soda.
“However, critics have warned that the potential effects on marine life remain uncertain.”
I really love how the mainstream makes it sound as if the only opposition is a cautious “hmm…”
Masters of understatement. STOP POURING CRAP INTO THE OCEANS.
It’s like the bird mashers. They’re OK because they are SavingThePlanet™. A few mashed raptors is the way to go, a worthy sacrifice, of course.
Upside down world.
CO₂ my arse
Perhaps we could find five UK citizens who would benefit from therapeutic immersion in sea water to offset their ‘carbon’ emissions. Feel like volunteering, Ed? Any suggestions for the other four? Justin R, Greta T, Chris P, Sir David A?
Starmer, Polanski, all journalists who work for the BBC, Guardian and Independent, anyone who has ever worn a keffiyeh (terrorist tea towel) or waved a Palestinian flag, anyone who has arrived on a small boat.
Sorry I thought you said 5 million UK residents.
Scientists. Ha. Good one.
Idiots and grifters, more like.
I know, let all those worried about the works of man affecting the climate sign up and pledge not to have children (like the ‘Shakers’).
It may not have any measurable effect on the climate but it may reduce the number of activists willing to impose their views upon us.
65,000 litres is a tiny amount in comparison with the amount of water in even a fairly local piece of ocean. 65 cubic metres in fact. Dilution will ensure that it does absolutely nothing at all, assuming that the intent was of any use. I don’t believe it was.
Quite a jolly jape though and likely well funded… I wonder how big their ‘research’ team is, and do they have a lovely well equipped lab etc? I guess they probably do…
“Without an ‘antacid’ like sodium hydroxide to react with, CO2 dissolving in the oceans forms a mild acid that has slowly but surely reduced the pH level.
This is already having catastrophic effects on sea life, as the acid dissolves marine creatures’ shells, damages coral, and even wears away sharks’ teeth.”
This is of course scientifically illiterate nonsense.
Bicarbonate in the oceans is massively buffered so a bit more or less CO2 isn’t going to have any impact on pH.
Corals and other sea creatures with carbonate shells evolved when atmospheric CO2 was around 10x what it is today.
In any case, the hard parts of coral are inside living tissue, and the tests of molluscs are covered with an organic layer (periostracum), so neither come into direct contact with seawater, and so aren’t going to dissolve even if the pH does come down (which it won’t).
Had to check the date on this, it’s definitely not April 1st.
So, adding an alkaline compound to the water results in a rise in PH, or alkalinity, how very f***ing enlightening!
Many years ago I worked in the capacity as an industrial chemist (petrochemical and edible oils and fats), so I’m quite interested to understand how someone would go about measuring and proving that ten tons of a gas has been added to the sheer vastness of the Atlantic Ocean in any period of time, due to very localised addition of a relatively minuscule (compared to the volume of the Atlantic) amount of an alkaline chemical, in open water, subject to whatever currents and churn may occur?
Ha proof! – this is modern $cience… they don’t trouble themselves with anything as mundane as proof, it’s all modelled virtually, far easier to do that from your comfy desk in your nice headquarters…
Especially when the model is pre set to provide the right answer
Did I read that right… approx 65 metric tons of chemicals… isn’t that literally, just a drop in the ocean?
More like a mole in the ocean.
Of course, it’s nothing, but that isn’t the point.
The oceans are not more acidic as they are still Alkaline – which means they have a slight negative charge. There is no evidence that shell fish are having their shells dissolved except in experiments where they put shells in acidic water, or water that has a positive charge. Also, how did life manage to evolve out of the oceans when there was no Oxygen in the atmosphere and CO2 occupied a sizable part of the atmosphere? AI thinks the atmosphere was dominated by CO2. Here is AI’s take on this: Before the oxygenation of Earth’s atmosphere, carbon dioxide (CO2) was a dominant gas, with estimates suggesting it made up anywhere from 6% to more than 70% of the total composition. Discover Magazine For the first billion years of Earth’s existence, intense volcanic activity produced a “reducing” atmosphere primarily composed of CO2, water vapour, and nitrogen, with smaller amounts of methane and ammonia. Scientific models of this period indicate: CO2-Rich Early Atmosphere: Some researchers estimate that billions of years ago, the atmosphere was “chock-full” of CO2, potentially 10 to 200 times higher than today’s levels. Natural Sequestration: Levels began to drop as the Earth cooled and water vapour condensed into oceans.… Read more »
So the real polluters, then, were the algae and cyanobacteria…
The sea is base, acidification except in the surface atoms is impossible it will instantly be neutralised.
As mentioned elsewhere, for 95% of the earth’s history Co2 was a much larger portion of the atmosphere. Life on earth shouldn’t have been possible by their insane hypothesis and the planet should have been uninhabitable during the cambrian expansion when Co2 was 10% of the atmosphere compared with the now life extinction threatening 0.04%.
“the scientists measured 10 tonnes of carbon”. I thought it was CO2 that the climate catastrophists wanted reduced, not carbon.
Understanding of basic chemistry is clearly not their forte, they like to pretend that photosynthesis doesn’t happen, and that for most plants that “Carbon” as they incorrectly label it is absolutely essential (for all life) and probably at much higher rates in the atmosphere than currently, possibly 2 to 3 times, for optimal growth and survivability.
Calling it carbon is like calling water Hydrogen, just conveniently ignore the oxygen atoms, they do nothing, clearly. The only natural forms of elemental carbon are graphite and diamond!
What did they do with the resulting Chlorine gas? The Hydrogen will just dissipate and combine with Oxygen to make water, the NaOH was used to absorb the CO2. Chlorine is nasty stuff; it was used as a poison gas at Ypres in WWI.
Also, why isolate the NAOH and then dissolve it in seawater? Why not just electrolyse the seawater in place? However, having isolated the NAOH why not just bubble air through it to absorb the CO2 – in fact why not pass a concentrated stream of CO2 through it such as the exhaust from a gas-fired power station. That would surely absorb far more.
Perhaps they could use the power from a gas-fired power station to electrolyse the seawater to produce the NaOH to absorb the CO2 from burning the gas – now what to do with all that pesky Chlorine?
I have it!
Simply react the Chlorine with the Hydrogen that was also liberated during the electrolysis. That will produce HCl which will dissolve into water to produce Hydrochloric Acid. This in turn will be neutralised by the caustic soda to produce harmless salt (NaCl) and water. Result: no pollution or nasty acids or alkalis.
I’m a genius!
Oh…
Chlorine is nasty stuff; it was used as a poison gas at Ypres in WWI.
It’s actually just a strong irritant which is only lethal under very unfavourable circumstances, less poisonous than gases used as weapon by French soldiers before this time (04/22/1915) and the main effect of this German attack was that the British soldiers fled their trenches which obviously never reoccurred during this war.
Chlorine is a bit more than an irritant – it’s highly chemically reactive.
A chlorine gas leak in the labs provoked an evacuation and very strong reaction from our boss when it happened where I worked in around 1980. One guy in hospital for a week and the perpetrator fired.
Yes, there were and are now far worse chemical weapons.
I don’t understand how a mild acid is eroding calcification marine structures. The pH of an acid is something less than 7, last time I looked, but the sea’s pH as listed is 7.83, which is mildly alkaline. So it may be less alkaline than it has been, but it’s still not acidic.
Ocean PH has allegedly dropped from 8.2 to 8.1, it is basic and trillions of tonnes of Co2 are sequestered into limestone by sea life. Co2 is whats needed to make shells as well, then again they claim that climate change is destroying corals but the GBR is thriving.
Its all BS
Very well funded BS I would guess though…
If all the CO2 in the atmosphere dissolved into the oceans, they would still be alkali.
“Without an ‘antacid’ like sodium hydroxide to react with, CO2 dissolving in the oceans forms a mild acid that has slowly but surely reduced the pH level.
This is already having catastrophic effects on sea life, as the acid dissolves marine creatures’ shells, damages coral, and even wears away sharks’ teeth.”
GARBAGE. The oceans are alkali. You may as well claim fresh water dissolves shell and wears away shark teeth.
These idiots seem to be the very definition of “mad scientists.”
Rising acidity? Is the pH of the ocean now less than 7? Er, no. What is actually happening is that the oceans are becoming very slightly less alkaline. but “creeping towards neutrality” isn’t quite as scary, is it?
What is the REAL purpose of this insane project exactly?
Global production of sodium hydroxide is approx. 80-83 Million Tons, BUT the manufacturing Industry alone uses at least 80 Million Tons a year. (Mostly in the production of plastics)
I would guess the amount they used was ALL of the excess global stocks available to eliminate the emissions of five UK citizens. (they hope) and at the same time risk a marine and food chain catastrophe.
To call this insane is like calling a kg of sugar the answer to world hunger.
Maybe their real purpose IS to destroy the natural Food chain and force us to eat only manufactured non food or bugs !!!!
And where are these chemicals derived? Oil no doubt
I dread to think how much it must cost to offset the supposed CO2 emissions of five people this way. It would probably be cheaper to dismantle a solar farm and plant quick-growing food crops.
This isn’t the CO₂ emissions of five people. It’s the annual CO₂ emissions occuring in the UK divided by an estimate of the number of people in the UK times 5. Which makes about 0.000008% of the annual CO₂ emissions occuring in the UK.
I kept a reef tank for years and I can tell with 100% certainty that changing the Ph like this would be disastrous for marine life. Never mind the utter pointlessness of the excercise.
Any fourth-form chemistry student would know that pouring Sodium Hydroxide into the sea will be devastating for marine life. Absolute insanity.
What could possibly go wrong?