Empire's Wake

Was The Great White Fleet A Bully Iron Experiment ?

Ever since  oceanographer John Martin launched the ocean fertilization controversy two decades ago  by asserting : "Give me a half tanker of iron and I'll give you an ice age," ecologists have warned the impacts on  marine food webs might not be worth the risk. The subject is hotly, and at times bitterly debated from coast to coast-- Woods Hole to Scripps Institute to be exact, but that has not stopped boiler room operators from offering dubious carbon offsets based on little more than promises to drop scrap iron in the ocean. SEC oversight scarcely applies to such penny stock science, the supposed benefits being calculated from the paper ratio of iron in biomass to the weight of whatever may be thrown over the transom.

The subject deserves better, and

it got a cautionary hearing at this fall's bioengineering conference  at the American Academy of Arts and Science in Cambridge. While marine biologists and ecologists remain skeptical of current proposals to capture carbon by fertilizing the oceans, it's clear from small scale experiments that the effect is real, albeit hard to quantify, since plankton blooms sink and disperse, and other elements are equally if not more important as marine fertilizers. Yet it could be that the late Dr.Martin's wish for large-scale experiments was realized before he was born, with the equivalent of  many shiploads of iron being dispersed at sea .

The biogeochemical cycle of iron continues today as always, with the wind-born deposit of  tonnes of metal bearing dust far out to sea. Could early 20th century shipping practice have altered marine biochemical equilibrium in a similar fashion, as steamers emulated Saharan dust storms in spewing iron downwind, and down current, far out at sea ?  If so, there may have been radical decline in iron deposition in some mid-ocean waters as bunker oil replaced bunker coal as the mainstream marine fuel.

Burning coal typically generates ash equal to a tenth the weight of the fuel. In modern power plants electrostatic precipitators, baghouses, and scrubbers remove over 95% of such particles. Steamships had none of these bulky gadgets, and most of their ash flew up the smokestacks and into the drink.

A  50,000,000 ton fleet of coal fired steamships existed less than a century ago. Owing to coals low energy density a ship's annual consumption often exceeded its registered tonnage. Though highly efficient for its day, the Titanic consumed nearly a kiloton of coal daily, and ordinary Edwardian vessels typically ate their weight in bunker coal in a month underway. This created enormous demand Europe alone supplying 213 million tons of  bunker coal in 1913- enough to make a pile the size of an iceberg, but only  half the world total , or perhaps less- -the numbers are obscure, for Cunard nostalgia notwithstanding, coal studies are not the height of scientific fashion.

Coal ash typically contains a scant hundred pounds of iron per ton. Much comes from burning iron  pyrites( FeS2), and acid sulfur gases in the exhaust of a coal fired steam boiler may have enhanced fly ash as ocean fertilizer by turning rusty oxide particles into soluble sulfates. Lord knows modern coal carriers complain of bilge corrosion.

With roughly a megaton of iron being released at sea annually, the early 20th century may have witnessed a heavy aerosol iron flux along well traveled shipping lanes. Could this have given ravenous phytoplankton and algae in mineral deficient 'marine desert ' regions a continuous series of square meals, and made the ocean bloom in the wake of Teddy Roosevelt's White Fleet ?

Studying the quantities and composition of coal combusted along historic shipping lanes could shed some light on the risks and benefits of the experiments being proposed today, and perhaps help illuminate why 20th century temperature rises fall near the low end of what many climate models predict. It remains to be discovered if the post-Victorian expansion of free trade by sea was not a great green experiment in disguise, but I suspect TR would have pronounced it a bully idea had Gifford Pinchot suggested the fleet take along a plankton net wielding oceanographer, and a few extra bottles of alcohol, for preservative purposes only.

Comments

[Russell]

1. before the advent of the Haber process, ammonium sulfate coproduced with coal tar was the most important synthetic nitrogen fertilizer

2 since ship's bunker coal contains ~ 2% or more of nitrogen ,mostly in polycyclics, , the pyrolysis yield of water soluble pyrroles, pyridine and ammonium compounds may have been in the low teragram range

3 Coal fly ash contains on the order of 1kg P2O5 / tonne

This suggests the codeposition of nutrient phosphorus and nitrogen with iron may have at least locally met the N-P-Fe synergy criterion for enhancement of carbon fixation.

[Doug Wilken]

Deepest apologies concerning the attribution error at Jerry Pournelle's site. :)

I look forward to your formal paper. It should prove interesting. Keep writing and researching.

[wkwillis]

What you have just said is equivalent to saying that because China does not filter out fine coal ash (which is now showing up as far as Seattle) that Chinese coal burning power plants are actually fighting Global Warming and might even precipitate an ice age.
This may be true. I hope it is true. I don't see any other source of hope. Solar is going to supplement natural gas peaking, wind is going to supplement hydroelectric generation, and nuclear could supplement, or replace, nuclear, but cars and planes will still need hydrocarbon fuels.
And we certainly appear to be past the tipping point for the Arctic Ice Pack, at least.
RESPONSE
As China is not a marine desert, this line of thought is of somewhat limited interest

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