Future Hope
Future Hope updated September 12, 2023
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Daniel F. Salas
Today the world population of the world is 8,000,000,000. The projected world population in 2060 will be 10,151,469,683. This projection presents huge problems as the population of the world in 40 years will have to deal with providing food, housing, and healthcare for 10 billion people. China's population is expected to peak to 1.45 billion in 2030, then drop to 1.4 billion by 2050 and 1.1 billion by the end of this century, India's population will peak between 1.6 and 1.8 billion somewhere around 2060, the projections say in a UN study of global population trends predicts that India will overtake China to become the world's most populous nation by 2022. The estimated population of India today is 1.353 billion. The population of India in the year 2000 was 1.042 billion and it increased to 1.206 billion by 2010. So, by 2030 the population of India will be around 1.6 billion.
The observation of "overpopulation" is not new, it is only through statistical science these projections take on a very real coming crisis. In the second century, the answer to overpopulation was the harsh reality that overpopulation brings pandemics, famine, and war to ease the problem. Tertullian has been called "the father of Latin Christianity'' and "the founder of Western theology." Tertullian was a resident of the city of Carthage in the second century CE when the population of the world was about 190 million (only 3–4% of what it is today). He notably said: "What most frequently meets our view (and occasions complaint) is our teeming population. Our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly support us... In very deed, pestilence, famine, wars, and earthquakes must be regarded as a remedy for nations, as the means of pruning the luxuriance of humanity.
From 2020 to 2050, the bulk of the world's population growth is predicted to take place in Africa: of the additional 1.9 billion people projected between 2020 and 2050, 1.2 billion will be added in Africa, 0.7 billion in Asia, and zero in the rest of the world.
"The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality, or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Afro-Eurasia from 1346–53. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, resulting in the deaths of 75–200 million people (world population in the time of Tertullian, second century CE, 190 million), (deaths from Coronavirus 2.571million as of 2021) in Eurasia and North Africa, peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351. The world population has been rising continuously since the end of the Black Death, around the year 1350. The fastest doubling of the world population happened between 1950 and 1986: a doubling from 2.5 to 5 billion people in just 37 years, mainly due to medical advancements and increases in agricultural productivity.
Medical advancements and agriculture are both based on science. In agricultural science, all plants have 17 Essential Plant Elements which include nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, boron, chlorine, iron, manganese, zinc, copper, molybdenum, and nickel. Of all the 17 elements above it was Nitrogen that threatened to be a far worse catastrophe than the Black Death. Nitrogen is one of the most important elements in organic chemistry. Nitrogen was first discovered and isolated by Scottish physician Daniel Rutherford in 1772. The extremely strong triple bond of 2 Nitrogen (N2) atoms in atmospheric elemental nitrogen (N≡N), is the second strongest bond of any diatomic molecule after carbon monoxide (CO). Nitrogen must first be processed, or "fixed", into a plant-usable form, usually ammonia (NH3 or H3N).
Life on earth started with the nitrogen fixation created in lightning strikes that produce nitrogen oxides (NO). After millions of years of lightning strikes, life starts a new method of nitrogen fixation by diazotrophic bacteria through enzymes known as nitrogenases. Nitrogen fixation is required for all forms of life, with nitrogen being essential for the biosynthesis of molecules (nucleotides, amino acids) that create plants, animals, and other organisms.
For a long time, sources of nitrogen compounds were limited. Nitrogen is the most fragile of the essential elements as it must be in the right molecular form. The main source was mining nitrate deposits and guano from tropical islands.
At the beginning of the 20th century, science predicted that these reserves could not satisfy future demands. In the 19th century, petrified bird dung (guano) was a key economic resource. Its use as a fertilizer facilitated the more efficient agricultural sector necessary for industrializing countries. This placed immense focus on the western coast of South America, which contained the world's best deposits of guano, and, inevitably, wars were fought for control of bird excrement. The Chincha Islands War, also known as Spanish–South American War was a series of coastal and naval battles between Spain and its former colonies of Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and Bolivia from 1865 to 1866. The conflict began with Spain's seizure of the guano-rich Chincha Islands.
Nitrogen fixation by industrial processes like the Frank–Caro process (1895–1899) and Haber–Bosch process (1908–1913) eased this shortage of nitrogen compounds, to the extent that half of the global food production relied on synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. At the same time, the use of the Ostwald process (1902) to produce nitric acid (HNO3), from industrial nitrogen fixation allowed the large-scale industrial production of nitrates as feedstock and in the manufacture of explosives in the World Wars of the 20th century.
The demand for guano led the United States to pass the Guano Islands Act in 1856, which gave U.S. citizens discovering a source of guano on an unclaimed island exclusive rights to the deposits. In 1857, the U.S. began annexing uninhabited islands in the Pacific and Caribbean, totaling nearly 100. Other countries also used their desire for guano as a reason to expand their empires. The United Kingdom claimed Kiritimati and Malden Island. Other nations that claimed the Guano Islands included Australia, France, Germany, the Hawaiian Kingdom, Japan, and Mexico. With the Treaty of Ancón of 1884, the War of the Pacific ended. Bolivia ceded its entire coastline to Chile, which also gained half of Peru's guano income from the 1880s and its guano islands. The conflict ended with Chilean control over the most valuable nitrogen resources in the world. Chile's national treasury grew by?900%?between 1879 and 1902 thanks to taxes coming from the newly acquired lands.?In 1913, a factory in Germany?began the first large-scale synthesis of ammonia using German chemist Fritz Haber's catalytic process. The international trade of guano and nitrates such as Chile saltpeter declined as artificially synthesized fertilizers became more widely used.
The First World War, often abbreviated as WWI was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously known as the Great War or "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilization of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It is also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated 9 million combatant deaths and 13 million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war. The timing of these events begs transparency. At the exact time in human history that humans outresource one of the "17 Essential Plant Elements", human understanding (Science) started inventing processes to synthesize this critical molecular resource. From 1865 to 1866 outright war was declared, at the time when a nitrogen shortage was projected. Frank–Caro process (1895–1899) and Haber–Bosch process, German chemist Fritz Haber's catalytic process (1908–1913), World War I (1914?- 1918). The very invention that saves mankind, with food and lowering birth rates, provides the explosives for World War 1-2 (22 million deaths). The underlying cause of the First War was the tension/instability brought on by the nitrogen shortage, wherein from 1865 to 1866 it was outright war.
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looking at it from the economic point of view, a nitrogen shortage equates to higher prices and eventually run-away prices. From the time of Tertullian's report, where understanding sees the world not able to sustain a human population to the eventual outresourcing of nitrogen; 1900 - 200 = 700 years with no total nitrate shortage. Tertullian, second century CE reports "Our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly support us". One observation is, World War Il was the direct result of World War I, if these two wars had not taken place, European nations would have been full of monarchies, and hereditary ruled kingdoms, and these monarchies remained predominant through the 19th century. Since the end of World War I, most European monarchies have been abolished. These monarchies would have entered the atomic age, wielding atomic bombs, from?1918 to 1945, (27 years). Mussolini was the first to exploit the desperate farmers of the time, to form a majority vote, Hitler saw this and did the same with Germany, both came to power through the agrarian vote.
?In 1870, almost 50 percent of the U.S. population was employed in agriculture. In the decade ending in 1870, population growth dropped below 30% for the first time in the nation`s history. As of 2008, less than 2 percent of the population is directly employed in agriculture, in 2017 it became 1.7 %. Here are six countries' average annual births per 1,000 people per year, the birth rates are the Central African Republic 34.41, India 18.2, USA 12.5, China 12.3, United Kingdom 12.1, Germany 8.6. Percentage of a country's population employed in agriculture in 2017; the Central African Republic 85.6%, India 42.7%, USA 1.7%, China 17.5%, United Kingdom 1.1%, Germany 1.3%. Here every country should be using petroleum to make fixed nitrogen to stabilize their birth rates.
?Today China manufactures 34,023,626.73 Metric Tons of fixed nitrogen compared to India’s 13,601,710.71 Metric Tons, two countries with similar populations, where the first one has almost stabilized its population, a difference in production of 20,421,916 Metric Tons. As a percentage of the population divided by Metric Tons produced; in the USA 331,002,000 persons divided by 11,217,874 Tons is 29.5%, China has 1,425,671,000 persons divided by 34,023,626.73 tons is 42%, India has 1,428,627,000 persons divided by 13,601,710 tons is 105%.
Today's trend towards urbanization as the cure to lowering birth rates comes with a high price as it adds to an out-of-control CO2 level. CO2 emissions are affected by urbanization. It is predicted that by 2050 about 64% of the developing world and 86% of the developed world will be urbanized. That is equivalent to approximately 3 billion urbanites by 2050, much of which will occur in Africa and Asia. Notably, the United Nations has also recently projected that nearly all global population growth from 2017 to 2030 will be by cities, with about 1.1 billion new urbanites over the next 10 years. In this view, economic growth and development with the urbanization effects have increased energy consumption that has generated an increased amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission, which is noted to be the dominant contributor to global warming and the GHG effect (Bakirtas & Akpolat, 2018; Heidari et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2018). The greenhouse effect is the way in which heat is trapped close to the surface of the Earth by (GHG) “greenhouse gases.”
The better quality of living standards in urban areas as compared to rural areas is the reason behind the lower birth rates. The stability lost in the undeveloped world’s agriculture is due to those farmers in opposition to industrial farming (prices of fertilizer and seed). A corporate entity that produces nitrogen, builds housing, and provides better health care, removing the unstable element of farming in undeveloped countries.
As a direct result of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer came the ratio of a country's population employed in agriculture to its birth rate. The created first world has totally benefitted leaving the created third world behind. By chance, a person is born into a desert environment, which presents a huge challenge as this person will need water, fertilizer, and seeds. The stress of the situation calls for more workers and bigger families. This person sees his or her family and life as good and beautiful, this person hears about the ancients of his or her race telling them to be fruitful and multiply. Here I want to ask a silly question "Who's fault is this" Hopefully everyone would answer that it is nobody’s fault. The answer is an intervention that costs resources, to help these people achieve agricultural stability and to bring a sustainable solution to the CO2 level that is already out of control. There is a crisis coming it is because of the CO2 level, it is caused by the first world and again just like a person born into the third world, truly it is nobody's fault, we are all born into it. In fact, the crisis was coming anyway it is just the industrial Co2 that has laid it on this generation. We will start actively terraforming the earth, we are already terraforming the earth.
The coming crisis event has started, it is clearly seen in the annual arctic sea ice minimum's direct relationship with the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). Life on Earth started in the ocean, creating an Atmospheric environment able to support life on land. Today's Atmospheric conditions are still dependent on the oceans. The short explanation is denser cold pushes down from the northern pole (AMOC), The minimum in 2007 was the lowest ever recorded, starting a chain reaction, killing the phytoplankton coccolithophores that create acid rain naturally, In colder temperatures Sulfate aerosol SO42 is a catalyst changing H2O from gas or vapor to water, H2O condensed to droplets. Terraforming the earth would include coccolithophores blooms, getting calcium from the bottom and bringing it up, PH conditioning the ocean, and using long plastic tubes and air bubbles. The good news is the (AMOC) that is in motion, will stay in motion for a thousand years. Terraforming the earth, before an ever slower (AMOC) getting the arctic sea ice minimum up to 7 million km2.
At around the year, 2009 sea ice started plummeting to another all-time low in 2010. The exceptional AMOC weakening during the winter of 2009–10 has been implicated in a damaging 13 cm sea-level rise along the New York coastline. A 2015 study suggested that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) has weakened by 15-20% in 200 years. The observed decline in the period 2004–2014 was a factor of 10 higher than that predicted by climate models participating in Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). The high world fires year of 2012 stopped the downward plummet of sea ice that started in the Exceptional AMOC weakening during the winter of 2009–10.
● From 7 million km2 in 1980 to 3.4 million km2 in 2012 that is 32 years. In 2020, the Arctic minimum sea ice covered an area of 3.36 million square kilometers.
The graph above shows a downward trend from 7 million km2 in 1980 to 2020 you have a net loss of 3.63 million km2 in 40 years. In 40 years from 3.36 in 2020, you have 3.36 - 3.63 = 0.27 million km2. 7 million km2 - 0.27 million km2= 6.72 million km2 that became a healthy AMOC.
This same scenario happened 160,000 years ago, at the end of the Eemian when the offshore ice had an insufficient mass to affect the pump (AMOC), and huge droughts destroyed life on Earth. Cool fresher water stays north causing an initial cooling, a 468-year-long aridity pulse with dust storms, aridity, and bushfires (just like the fires of today). This event kills off so much life that all greenhouse gasses are gone, starting a chain reaction into an ice age. Today the earth cannot fall into an Ice Age because the (GHG) “greenhouse gases" levels are not dependent on this system. Humans have been in the process of terraforming the earth and not really knowing it. The bottom graph shows the precession of the earth as the tilt has expanded across 5 million years this is the indirect cause. Earth's northern pole now tilts the sun in summer, and the ice reflects light but where there are “greenhouse gases” the reflected light bounces back between the air and ice, heating the air, more ice is melted, healthy AMOC.
The coming event happens at the "end of every interglacial period" of all the ice ages. It is part of a cycle that starts with the built-up ice on the poles (ice age cycles), This ice melts so only ice on land is left (Greenland, Antarctic continent). The Eemian period closed as temperatures steadily fell to conditions cooler and drier than the present, with a 468-year-long aridity pulse in central Europe at about 116,000 BC, and by 112,000 BC, a glacial period had returned. The late Eemian aridity pulse occurred at a 65°N July insolation of 416Wm-2, close to today's value of 428Wm-2 (ref. 9), and may therefore be relevant for the interpretation of present-day climate. At the end of the Eemian was a decrease in both precipitation and temperature as an indication of a close link of this extreme climate event to a sudden southward shift of the position of the North Atlantic drift, the ocean current that brings warm surface waters to the northern European region.
Measurements of CO2 levels in air bubbles trapped in ice give us less accurate but still useful measurements back through many ice ages. Prior to the industrial age was 10,000 years of heat, melting the ice build-up from the prior 100,000 years. Prior to the industrial age, the CO2 count was still very high, close to that of the Eemian. Without human intervention, this interglacial period would have looked more like the two prior interglacial periods before the Eemian, with a sharp rise and then a crash. Droughts that kill off life are the signs, The year 1816 is known as the Year Without a Summer (also the Poverty Year and Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death) because of severe climate abnormalities that caused average global temperatures to decrease by 0.4–0.7 °C (0.7–1 °F). The Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879 occurred during the late Qing dynasty in China. It is usually referred to as Dīngwù Qíhuāng (丁戊奇荒) in China. The industrial age has terraformed the earth, keeping an AMOG healthy.
During the Eemian there was a strong presence of life created by breathing in oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide (CO2), and methane (CH4) that is emitted from livestock originates in the forestomach, also called the rumen, of ruminants (wherein Europe Hippopotamus where as far north as the Rhine river), a lot of rainstorms producing lightning and nitrous oxide (N2O), temperatures higher then today with higher humidity and more water vapor (H2O) all of these gasses are the quintessential health greenhouse gases.
United Kingdom’s record of droughts is influenced mainly by the Gulf Stream. The United Kingdom is sensitive to "Phytoplankton wars" where coccolithophores are replaced by other types of Phytoplankton, and you have droughts. The phytoplankton coccolithophores create Sulfate aerosol SO42-producing droplets. A low PH kills Phytoplankton such as coccolithophores that contain calcium carbonate cell walls that are sensitive to ocean acidification. Coccoliths are the main component of the Chalk, a Late Cretaceous rock formation that outcrops widely in?southern England?is the frontal border of the Gulf Stream it formed the White Cliffs of Dover, and other similar rocks in many other parts of the world. Ocean acidification is sometimes called “climate change’s equally evil twin,” and for good reason: it's a significant and harmful consequence of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that we don't see or feel because its effects are happening underwater. At least one-quarter of the carbon dioxide (CO2) released by burning coal, oil, and gas doesn't stay in the air but instead dissolves into the ocean. Since the beginning of the industrial era, the ocean has absorbed some 525 billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere, presently around 22 million tons per day.
The United Kingdom escaped the benefit of the industrial age.
tropics or Alaska and Antarctica, more frequent and intense El Ni?o events due to associated shutdowns of the Kuroshio, Leeuwin, and East Australian Currents that are connected to the same thermohaline circulation as the Gulf Stream, or an oceanic anoxic event below surface levels of the stagnant oceans becomes completely depleted – a probable cause of past mass extinction events.
The Cretaceous is justly famous for its chalk; indeed, more chalk formed in the Cretaceous than in any other period in the Phanerozoic. Mid-ocean ridge activity—or rather, the circulation of seawater through the enlarged ridges—enriched the oceans in calcium; this made the oceans more saturated, as well as increased the bioavailability of the element for calcareous nanoplankton.
Gradual climate change, sea-level fluctuations, or a pulse of oceanic acidification during the late Triassic may have reached a tipping point. However, the effect of such processes on Triassic animal and plant groups is not well understood. The extinctions at the end of the Triassic were initially attributed to gradually changing environments.
The?Triassic–Jurassic (Tr-J) extinction event, sometimes called the?end-Triassic extinction, marks the boundary between the Triassic and Jurassic periods, 201.3 million years ago, and is one of the major extinction events of the Phanerozoic eon, profoundly affecting life on land and in the oceans.
There is good evidence for a collapse in the reef community, as corals practically disappeared from the Tethys Ocean at the end of the Triassic and would not return to their previous abundance until the late Sinemurian. This reef collapse was likely driven by ocean acidification.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
In the 200-plus years since the industrial revolution began, the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has increased due to human actions. During this time, the pH of surface ocean waters has fallen by 0.1 pH units. This might not sound like much, but the pH scale is logarithmic, so this change represents approximately a 30 percent increase in acidity. The ocean absorbs about 30% of the carbon dioxide (CO2) that is released into the atmosphere. As levels of atmospheric CO2 increase from human activity such as burning fossil fuels (e.g., car emissions) and changing land use (e.g., deforestation), the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the ocean also increases. When CO2 is absorbed by seawater, a series of chemical reactions occur resulting in the increased concentration of hydrogen ions. This process has far-reaching implications for the ocean and the creatures that live there. The pH scale runs from 0 to 14, with 7 being a neutral ph. Anything higher than 7 is basic (or alkaline) and anything lower than 7 is acidic. The pH scale is an inverse of hydrogen ion concentration, so more hydrogen ions translate to higher acidity and lower ph. This low PH kills Phytoplankton such as coccolithophores containing calcium carbonate cell walls that are sensitive to ocean acidification. Coccolithophorids are responsible for the release of significant amounts of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) into the atmosphere. DMS is oxidized to form sulfate which, in areas where ambient aerosol particle concentrations are low, can contribute to the population of cloud condensation nuclei, mostly leading to increased cloud cover and cloud albedo according to the so-called CLAW Hypothesis. Initially, field evidence of coccolithophore fossils in rock was used to show that the deep-sea fossil record bears a rock record bias like the one that is widely accepted to affect the land-based fossil record.
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The main direct effect of sulfates on the climate involves the scattering of light, effectively increasing the Earth's albedo. This effect is moderately well understood and leads to cooling from the negative radiative forcing of about 0.4 W/m2 relatives to pre-industrial values, partially offsetting the larger (about 2.4 W/m2) warming effect of greenhouse gases. Sulfate aerosols can act as cloud condensation nuclei, and this leads to greater numbers of smaller droplets of water. Many smaller droplets can diffuse light more efficiently than a few larger droplets. The second indirect effect is the further knock-on effects of having more cloud condensation nuclei. It is proposed that these include the suppression of drizzle, and increased cloud height, to facilitate cloud formation at low humilities and longer cloud lifetime.
CLAW hypothesis
Sulfate aerosol (SO42? and methane sulfonic acid droplets) act as CCNs. These sulfate aerosols form partly from the dimethyl sulfide (DMS) produced by phytoplankton in the open ocean. Large algal blooms in ocean surface waters occur in a wide range of latitudes and contribute considerable DMS into the atmosphere to act as nuclei. The idea that an increase in global temperature would also increase phytoplankton activity and therefore CCN numbers was seen as a possible natural phenomenon that would counteract climate change. An increase in phytoplankton has been observed by scientists in certain areas, but the causes are unclear.
Today's trend towards urbanization as the cure to lowering birth rates comes with a high price as it adds to an out-of-control CO2 level. CO2 emissions are affected by urbanization. It is predicted that by 2050 about 64% of the developing world and 86% of the developed world will be urbanized. That is equivalent to approximately 3 billion urbanites by 2050, much of which will occur in Africa and Asia. Notably, the United Nations has also recently projected that nearly all global population growth from 2017 to 2030 will be by cities, with about 1.1 billion new urbanites over the next 10 years. In this view, economic growth and development with the urbanization effects have increased energy consumption that has generated an increased amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission, which is noted to be the dominant contributor to global warming and the GHG effect (Bakirtas & Akpolat, 2018; Heidari et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2018). The greenhouse effect is the way in which heat is trapped close to the surface of the Earth by (GHG) “greenhouse gases.”
The better quality of living standards in urban areas as compared to rural areas is the reason behind the lower birth rates. The stability lost in the undeveloped world’s agriculture is due to those farmers in opposition to industrial farming (prices of fertilizer and seed). A corporate entity that produces nitrogen, builds housing, and provides better health care, to remove the unstable element of farming in undeveloped countries.?
????Terraforming the earth’s oceans for both coccolithophores blooms and green plankton blooms. PH conditioning the ocean by using long plastic tubes and air bubbles, getting the elements from the bottom, and bringing them up. Nature does this?by enriching the upper ocean’s layers with hydrothermal vents below. These hydrothermal vents are often found in deep waters where the earth is splitting due to plate tectonics. This is where the cold water is forced to flow, first traveling through the ocean’s conveyor belt to the surface streams.?
Calcium, sulfur, manganese, and iron all saturated the oceans of the Cretaceous period, this saturation increased the bioavailability of the elements for calcareous nannoplankton, causing rain on the land. Volcanism on Earth has slowed down a lot since the Cretaceous period. Volcanism fertilizes the ocean and land. These nutrients feed the microscopic plankton?that plays a big role in?marine ecosystems. They provide the base for the entire marine?food chain.?Phytoplankton makes their energy through?photosynthesis, the process of using?chlorophyll?and sunlight to create energy. Like other plants, phytoplankton takes in carbon dioxide and releases oxygen. Phytoplankton accounts for about half of the photosynthesis on the planet, making them one of the world’s most important producers of oxygen. Phytoplankton rely on nutrients found in their surroundings, such as phosphate, nitrate, and calcium, to thrive.
The graph above shows the percentage of elements found in seawater. When you look at the White Cliffs of Dover in England you can see that the ocean must have a source of calcium that is unseen. This source is Ocean vents the primary?determinant of ocean chemistry. Other major contributors include?runoff?from?rivers and atmospheric changes in the air. For coccolithophores blooms the key enrichment element is calcium. The source is “White smokers” vents, that pour the elements barium, calcium, and silicon, which are white and often acidic.
Here are two different studies below that show that Iron and Magnesium play a key role in the oceans. “Black smokers” are chimneys formed from deposits of iron sulfide, which is black. One study below looks at the rust color of iron in seawater and how it limits the light absorbed in red algae as it cannot absorb the red spectrum, giving other species a better chance in the competition for recourses.
February 9, 2021
Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (GEOMAR)
Iron chemistry in seawater and its relationship to phytoplankton: a workshop report Mark L. Wells”, Neil M. Priceb, Kenneth W. Bruland” ahWute of Marine Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA Biology Department, McGill University, Montreal, Canada Received 26 July 1994; revision accepted 6 October 1994 mesoscale iron fertilization experiment south of the Galapagos Islands demonstrated that enhanced iron input indeed increases phytoplankton growth rates and biomass (Kolber et al., 1994; Martin et al., 1994). Even so, the ecosystem response to the transient iron addition was far less dramatic than seen in bottle experiments, which illustrates our incomplete understanding of iron: plankton interactions in HNLC systems.
?A new study, led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), reveals that the ancient deep ocean was not only devoid of oxygen but also rich in iron, a key?biological nutrient?for nearly a billion years longer than previously thought--right through a key evolutionary interval that culminated in the first rise of animals.
Other research shows winds blowing off the Sahara are one of the most important sources of?iron?dust in the?ocean,?supplying more than 70 percent of dissolved?iron?to the Atlantic.
?Other research shows that iron was once abundant in the oceans. Iron began to form its deposits on the ocean floor between 2.5 billion and 1.9 billion years ago, as oxygen levels rose. Despite being the fourth most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, iron is vanishingly scarce in the modern ocean.
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How were the Earth's solid deposits of iron ore created? One researcher suggests that, billions of years ago, "green rust" formed in seawater and sank to the ocean bed, becoming an original source of banded iron formations. While this would have been just one means of iron deposition, green rust seems to have delivered a large proportion of iron to our early ocean.
February 9, 2021
Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (GEOMAR)
Iron chemistry in seawater and its relationship to phytoplankton: a workshop report Mark L. Wells”, Neil M. Priceb, Kenneth W. Bruland” ahWute of Marine Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA Biology Department, McGill University, Montreal, Canada Received 26 July 1994; revision accepted 6 October 1994 mesoscale iron fertilization experiment south of the Galapagos Islands demonstrated that enhanced iron input indeed increases phytoplankton growth rates and biomass (Kolber et al., 1994; Martin et al., 1994). Even so, the ecosystem response to the transient iron addition was far less dramatic than seen in bottle experiments, which illustrates our incomplete understanding of iron: plankton interactions in HNLC systems.
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Certain types of phytoplankton release dangerous toxins, and the region may experience a red tide or other serious?algal bloom. These temporary conditions can cause high fish mortality and other damage to the marine ecosystem. Contaminated fish that are caught and served to people may also cause illness and even death. As other nutrients are abundant, scientists have so far assumed that the amount of the available "micronutrient" iron determines how well phytoplankton thrives or not in the Southern Ocean. Researchers from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and the UK's National Oceanography Center have now published a study in the international journal?Nature Communications?showing for the first time that in some areas of the Southern Ocean, manganese, not iron, is the limiting factor for phytoplankton growth.
Other research shows that vent fluid?in the recharge zone is formed by seawater?seeping into cracks in the seafloor. As the seawater is warmed by its?proximity?to magma, it is stripped of its?magnesium. Aquatic microbiologist Jef Huisman of the University of Amsterdam.
Besides the white and black vents, there are diffuse vents. Diffuse flows usually cover a larger portion of a vent field than narrow hydrothermal vents. Vent fluids exiting through diffuse flows are usually cooler, less toxic (from mixing with seawater), and exit into the ocean more slowly over a larger area. Diffuse flows also lack the telltale “smoke” of?gushing hydrothermal vents.
?Temperatures at vent fields range from below 50° Celsius (122° Fahrenheit) to more than 400° Celsius (752° Fahrenheit). Some ocean vents are rich in oxygen and oxygen compounds (such as sulfates), while others are?anoxic. Some are highly acidic, with a pH as low as 2. Others have a pH as high as 8. Energy from the Earth’s superheated?mantle?and?core?can heat vent fluid to temperatures of more than to 400° Celsius (752° Fahrenheit). Around diffuse flows, the temperature of vent fluids is usually below 50° Celsius (122° Fahrenheit).
?The ocean is vast, one might think it to be impossible to change the ocean, which has absorbed some 525 billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere, since the beginning of the industrial era, presently around 22 million tons per day. Truly removing this CO2 is impossible, what can be done is saturation using the hot hydrothermal vents.
There are two technologies that already exist, one is pulverized Igneous rock like basalt to fertilize the ocean and the second is to use metal tubes and then plastic trash bags like rolls without divisions. The bottom of the tube would be metal so as to not melt the plastic until the surrounding cold water cools the vented water. The hydrothermal vent fluid and the surrounding ocean water are rich in elements such as?iron,?manganese,?and various species of sulfur including?sulfide,?sulfite,?sulfate,?and elemental sulfur?from which they can derive energy or nutrients.
By using Pulverized Igneous rock like basalt to fertilize the ocean, utilizing the mesopelagic fish that dominate the total biomass of fish in the ocean. By utilizing the mesopelagic fish with an estimated 1,000 million tons of mass, the?mesopelagic fish?dominate the total biomass of fish in the ocean. This biomass is mostly dominated by small (few-cm-long) mesopelagic fish, which hide at depths up to ≈1000 m during the day and migrate up the water column at night to feed on zooplankton, often eating the highly abundant copepods (Battaglia et al., 2014).?
Fertilization of the waters above the mesopelagic fish can be done, using thermal vents or the basalt taken from the land. A case study of this is the fertilization seen in Hawaii’s Mount Kilauea,?which released over?27 billion cubic feet?of lava onto the island and surrounding ocean. Just three days after the eruption began, massive blooms of phytoplankton, or tiny light-absorbing algae, were in full swing.
“The reason Mount Kilauea’s hot lava triggered phytoplankton populations to boom was initially a mystery to scientists. Hawaii, like most tropical places, is surrounded by waters?lacking in nutrients?like phosphorus and nitrogen. Given this, most tropical algae blooms are triggered when phosphorous and nitrate, a form of nitrogen, is added to the nutrient-deprived water. But this bloom was different. “There was no reason for us to expect that an algae bloom like this would happen,” said Dr. Seth John, geologist at USC Dornsife and co-author of a new study of the algae bloom. “Lava doesn’t contain any nitrate.” During the eruption, the seawater surrounding Hawaii’s algae bloom was chocked full of nitrate - but where was it all coming from?”. I believe the mesopelagic fish?brought the nitrates to the surface.
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Below is a view of the Northern sphere of the Earth, The top 15 degrees have very little land mass, this is the reason the AMOC is so important and not the south pole. The ?Ice melts every year in the north because there is no land, thus the largest exchange of Ice to water, and as seen below most of this water can only flow into the Atlantic rather than the Pacific Ocean.
The graph of the ocean conveyor belt shows the AMOC flows down from the northern hemisphere down to the horn of Africa, then up the coast of eastern Africa then up to India. The Topographic map below shows the separation of the AMOC under the horn of Africa and the southern pump that flows from Antarctica to the Pacific.
The effects that cause the La Nina and El Nino are at the opposite end of the AMOC as the latter is dependent on the North and South poles and the cold water. The La Nina and El Nino originate on the Equator the hottest zone, as it receives direct sunlight, and the Hydrothermal vents around Papua New Guinea, the Tonga arc, and Lau back-arc are in a tug-of-war with the vents of the East Pacific Rise. The Papua New Guinea vent are much more numerous winning the war most of the time, as a La Nina. This La Nina and El Nino is out of human control but to help the AMOC is within our ability.
Most of the elemental nutrients put out from all the vents of the Central Indian Ridge, and Southwestern Indian Ridge leave the Indian Ocean. For the continent of India, to get more rain you would have to find the right vents, then get the vented water past the boundary in-depth so that currents travel in the opposite direction, into the Indian Ocean. The same could be done for the Atlantic Ocean, where most of the vented water from the Mid-Atlantic ridge leaves the Atlantic. The vents all around the Arctic Circle could be used to bring the Arctic Sea ice minimum up.
Conclusion: There are two main types of carbon?sinks, that?is anything, natural or otherwise, that accumulates and stores carbon-containing chemical compounds for an indefinite period, that is the ocean and land plants.?To just produce more fixed Nitrogen is not sustainable, In the USA we produce enough Nitrogen, but the farmers grow produce in soil that is already depleted of nutrients, thus you will need more Nitrogen each year to offset the reduction of all the other elements needed for plant growth. A cheap and sustainable solution is for every Government of the world to subsidize the pulverization of Igneous rocks like basalt and granite which have the highest mineral content, with basalt providing a greater balance of nutrients for optimal plant health and vitality. Once mass-produced this can be applied to the farm and the open fields for wildlife. Reclaiming the deserts and reclaiming the oceans through fertilization. The problem today lies with the immediate needs of the population versus a sustainable goal. The hope is to Fertilize the waters above the mesopelagic fish, using thermal vents or the same basalt used on the land to reclaim the land from desertification.
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